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Lllustratey Cabinet Edition. 





- THE WORKS OF GEORGE ELIOT, 


AND 


LIFE. Edited by J..W. CROSS. 


In 24 volumes, with 120 Etchings and Photo-Etchings. 
Illuminated cloth, gilt tops, $36.00. 


Each work may be had separately, price, $1.50 per vol. 


MIDDLEMARCH. 3 vols. 

FELIX? HOLT. vols, 

ROMOLA. 3 vols. 

SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.— ESSAYS. 2 vols. 

IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. — MISCELLANEOUS 
ESSAYSia1 VOL. 

DANIEL DERONDA. 3 vols. 

POEMS. 2 vols. 

SILAS MARNER. — THE LIFTED VEIL.— BROTHER JACOB. 
4 vol. 

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GEORGE ELIJOT’S LIFE, AS RELATED IN HER LETTERS 
AND JOURNALS. EDITED BY J. W. CROSS. 3 vols. 


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MERRILL AND BAKER, NEW YORK. 


Che CHorks of George Biot 
Sere NeormOr CLERICAL LIFE. 


Wole LL: 


ILLUSTRATED CABINET EDITION 





























































































































Janet Dempster. 
Photo-Etching. — From Drawing by F. T. Merrill. 


a 


Paar nee or Gay 





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or ihe Ae Wis 
+" 7 


Allustrated Cabinet Codition 


SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE 


Wola Ll: 


ESSAYS 


AND 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK 


BY 


GEORGE ELIOT 


OMAith Elustrattons 


NEW YORK 
MERRILL AND BAKER 


PUBLISHERS 


Aniversity [ress : 
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 


CONTENTS. 





PAGE 
JANETS REPENTANCE (Continued) . . 


ESSAYS. 


WOoRLDLINESS AND OTHER-WoRLDLINESS: THE Port 


Wace — 2.) ae er ' 191 
(Westminster Review, 1857. 
EVANGELICAL TEacutnc: Dr. Cumming ....,. . 258 
(Westminster Review, 1855.* 
Tue INFLUENCE oF RationatismM: Lercky’s History . 302 
(Fortnightly Review, 1865.) 
ADDRESS TO WorKING-MEN, By Fetrx Hour . . . . 325 
(Blackwood’s Magazine, 1868.) 

LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
PPOeRHORSHIP Qs. >. %s,.20+ 5° 6) i ae Se 2 84g 
TERDGMENTS ON) AUTHORS. cs «aun, SBR 
STOR To EULING oa”, seis eee ie fe SES 
TISGORIC] LMAGINA TION (auc Me meee ne ee we) Se ey SET 


VALU MEIN, ORIGINALITY (i Wetene ee ue no a me oeS 


vi CONTENTS. 


To THE PrRosaic ALL THINGS ARE PROSAIC 


“SDEARGR RELIGIOUS IOVE® ) 0 ae aeeeee 
WE MAKE OUR OWN PRECEDENTS. , . 
BigtH OF TOLERANCE: .) 5) eee: 


FELIX QUI NON POTUIT PETS eee te ys 


Divine Grack aA Reat Emanation 
“A Fine Excess.” — Fertine 1s ENercy 


PAGE 


364 
364. 
365 
365 
366 
366 
367 


List of Lllustrations. 
Vou. IL. 


DeNEIeNMECTOROe - « + . «ws + 6» « Frontismece 


Osta MOSBEGINE@T . . . . . «7s » « « » + Page 187 





SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. — Continued. 










SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 





JANET’S REPENTANCE. — Continued. 


CHAPTER V. 


It was half-past nine o’clock in the morning. 
The midsummer sun was already warm on the 
roofs and weathercocks of Milby. The church- 
bells were ringing, and many families were con- 
scious of Sunday sensations, chiefly referable to 
the fact that the daughters had come down to 
breakfast in their best frocks, and with their hair » 
particularly well dressed. For it was not Sunday, 
but Wednesday; and though the Bishop was going 
to hold a Confirmation, and to decide whether or 
not there should be a Sunday evening lecture in 
Milby, the sunbeams had the usual working-day 
look to the haymakers already long out in the 
fields, and to laggard weavers just “setting up” 
their week’s “piece.” The notion of its being 
Sunday was the strongest in young ladies like 
iss Phipps, who was going to accompany her 
ounger sister to the Confirmation, and to wear a 
weetly pretty ” transparent bonnet with marabout 
thers on the interesting occasion, thus throwing 
into relief the suitable simplicity of her sister's 
attire, who was, of course, to appear in a new white 
VOL. 11. —1 


2 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


frock; or in the pupils at Miss Townley’s, who 
were absolved from all lessons, and were going to 
church to see the Bishop, and to hear the Honoura- 
ble and Reverend Mr. Prendergast, the rector, read 
prayers, —a high intellectual treat, as Miss Townley 
assured them. It seemed only natural that a rector 
who was honourable should read better than old 
Mr. Crewe, who was only a curate and not honour- 
able; and when little Clara Robins wondered why 
some clergymen were rectors and others not, Ellen 
Marriott assured her with great confidence that it 
was only the clever men who were made rectors. 
Ellen Marriott was going to be confirmed. She 
was a short, fair, plump girl, with blue eyes and 
sandy hair, which was this morning arranged in 
taller cannon curls than usual, for the reception of 
the Episcopal benediction, and some of the young 
ladies thought her the prettiest girl in the school; 
but others gave the preference to her rival, Maria 
Gardner, who was much taller, and had a lovely 
“crop” of dark-brown ringlets, and who, being 
also about to take upon herself the vows made in 
her name at her baptism, had oiled and twisted 
her ringlets with especial care. As she seated her- 
self at the breakfast-table before Miss Townley’s 


entrance to dispense the weak coffee, her crop ex- 


cited so strong’a sensation that Ellen Marriott was 
at length impelled to look at it, and to say with 
suppressed but bitter sarcasm, “Is that Miss 
Gardner’s head?” “ Yes,” said Maria, amiable 
and stuttering, and no match for Ellen in retort 


“th—th—this is my head.” “Then I don’t admire ~ 


it at all!” was the crushing rejoinder of Ellen, — 
followed by a murmur of approval among her 
friends. Young ladies, I suppose, exhaust their 


w 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 2 


sac of venom in this way at school. That is the 
reason why they have such a harmless tooth for 
each other in after life. 

The only other candidate for confirmation at 
Miss Townley’s was Mary Dunn, a draper’s daugh- 
tet ‘in Milby and a distant relation of the Miss 
Linnets. Her pale lanky hair could never be 
coaxed into permanent curl, and this morning the 
heat had brought it down to its natural condition 
of lankiness earlier than usual. But that was not 
what made her sit melancholy and apart at the 
lower end of the form. Her parents were admirers 
of Mr. Tryan, and had been persuaded, by the 
Miss Linnets’ influence, to insist that their daugh- 
ter should be prepared for confirmation by him, 
over and above the preparation given to Miss 
Townley’s pupils by Mr. Crewe. Poor Mary 
Dunn! I am afraid she thought it too heavy a 
price to pay for these spiritual advantages, to be 
excluded from every game at ball, to be obliged to 
walk with none but little girls, —in fact, to be 
the object of an aversion that nothing short of an 
incessant supply of plumcakes would have neutral- 
ized. And Mrs. Dunn was of opinion that plum- 
cake was unwholesome. The anti-Tryanite spirit, 
you perceive, was very strong at Miss Townley’s, 
imported probably by day scholars, as well as 
encouraged by the fact that that clever woman was 
herself strongly opposed to innovation, and re- 
marked every Sunday that Mr. Crewe had preached 
an “ excellent discourse.” Poor Mary Dunn dreaded 
the moment when school-hours would be over, for 
then she was sure to be the butt of those very 
explicit remarks which, in young ladies’ as well 
as young gentlemen’s seminaries, constitute the 


4 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


most subtle and delicate form of the innuendo. 
“T’d never be a’ Tryanite, would you?” * Oh, 
here comes the lady that knows so much more 
about religion than we do!” “Some people think 
themselves so very pious! ” 

It is really surprising that young ladies should 
not be thought competent to the same curriculum 
as young gentlemen. I observe that their powers 
of sarcasm are quite equal; and if there had been 
a genteel academy for young gentlemen at Milby, 
I am inclined to think that, notwithstanding 
Euclid and the classics, the party spirit there 
would not have exhibited itself in more pungent 
irony or more incisive satire than was heard in 
Miss Townley’s seminary. But there was no such 
academy, the existence of the grammar-school 
under Mr. Crewe’s superintendence probably dis- 
couraging speculations of that kind; and the 
genteel youths of Milby were chiefly come home 
for the midsummer holidays from distant schools. 
Several of us had just assumed coat-tails, and the 
assumption of new responsibilities apparently fol- 
lowing as a matter of course, we were among the 
candidates for confirmation. JI wish I could say 
that the solemnity of our feelings was on a level 
with the solemnity of the occasion; but unimagi- 
native boys find it difficult to recognize apostolical 
institutions in their developed form, and I fear our 
chief emotion concerning the ceremony was a sense 
of sheepishness, and our chief opinion the specula- 
tive and heretical position that it ought to be con- 
fined to the girls. It wasa pity, you will say; but 
it is the way with us men in other crises that come 
a long while after confirmation. The golden mo- 
ments in the stream of life rush past us, and we 


JANETS REPENTANCE. 5 


see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, 
and we only know them when they are gone. 

But, as I said, the morning was sunny, the bells 
were ringing, the ladies of Milby were dressed in 
their Sunday garments. 

And who is this bright-looking woman walking 
with hasty step along Orchard Street so early, 
with a large nosegay in her hand? Can it be 
Janet Dempster, on whom we looked with such 
deep pity, one sad midnight, hardly a fortnight 
ago? Yes; no other woman in Milby has those 
searching black eyes, that tall graceful uncon- 
strained figure, set off by her simple muslin dress 
and black lace shawl, that massy black hair now 
so neatly braided in glossy contrast with the white 
satin ribbons of her modest cap and bonnet. No 
other woman has that sweet speaking smile, with 
which she nods to Jonathan Lamb, the old parish 
clerk. And, ah !—now she comes nearer — there 
are those sad lines about the mouth and eyes on 
which that sweet smile plays like sunbeams on the 
storm-beaten beauty of the full and ripened corn. 
She is turning out of Orchard Street, and making 
her way as fast as she can to her mother’s house, — 
a pleasant cottage facing a roadside meadow, from 
which the hay is being carried. Mrs. Raynor has 
had her breakfast, and is seated in her armchair 
reading, when Janet opens the door, saying in her 
most playful voice, — 

“Please, mother, I’m come to show myself to 
you before I go to the Parsonage. Have I put on 
my pretty cap and bonnet to satisfy you?” 

Mrs. Raynor looked over her spectacles, and met 
her daughter’s glance with eyes as dark and loving 
as her own. She was a much smaller woman than 


6 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


Janet, both in figure and feature, the chief resem- 
blance lying in the eyes and the clear brunette 
complexion. The mother’s hair had long been 
gray, and was gathered under the neatest of caps, 
made by her own clever fingers, as all Janet’s caps 
and bonnets were too. They were well-practised 
fingers, for Mrs. Raynor had supported herself in 
her widowhood by keeping a millinery establish- 
ment, and in this way had earned money enough to 
give her daughter what was then thought a first-rate 
education, as well as to save asum which, eked 
out by her son-in-law, sufficed to support her in 
her solitary old age. Always the same clean, neat 
old lady, dressed in black silk, was Mrs. Raynor: 
a patient, brave woman, who bowed with resigna- 
tion under the burden of remembered sorrow, and 
bore with meek fortitude the new load that the 
new days brought with them. 

“Your bonnet wants pulling a trifle forwarder, 
my child,” she said, smiling, and taking off her 
spectacles, while Janet at once knelt down before 
her, and waited to be “ set to rights,” as she would 
have done when she was a child. “ You’re going 
straight to Mrs. Crewe’s, I suppose. Are those 
flowers to garnish the dishes?” 

“No, indeed, mother. This is a nosegay for 
the middle of the table. I’ve sent up the dinner- 
service and the ham we had cooked at our house 
yesterday, and Betty is coming directly with the 
garnish and the plate. We shall get our good Mrs. 
Crewe through her troubles famously. Dear tiny 
woman! You should have seen her lift up her 
hands yesterday, and pray heaven to take her 
before ever she should have another collation to 
get ready for the Bishop. She said, ‘It’s bad 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 7 


enough to have the Archdeacon, though he does n’t 
want half so many jelly-glasses. I wouldn’t 
mind, Janet, if it was to feed all the old hungry 
cripples in Milby; but so much trouble and ex- 
pense for people who eat too much every day of 
their lives!’ We had such a cleaning and fur- 
bishing-up of the sitting-room yesterday! Nothing 
will ever do away with the smell of Mr. Crewe’s 
pipes, you know; but we have thrown it into the 
background, with yellow soap and dry lavender. 
And now I must run away. You will come to 
church, mother?” 

“Yes, my dear, I would n’t lose such a pretty 
sight. It does my old eyes good to see so many 
fresh young faces. Is your husband going?” 

“Yes, Robert will be there. I’ve made him as 
neat as a new pin this morning, and he says the 
Bishop will think him too buckish by half. I 
took him into Mammy Dempster’s room to show 
himself. We hear Tryan is making sure of the 
Bishop’s support; but we shall see. I would give 
my crooked guinea, and all the luck it will ever 
bring me, to have him beaten, for I can’t endure 
the sight of the man coming to harass dear old 
Mr. and Mrs. Crewe in their last days. Preach- 
ing the Gospel indeed! That is the best Gospel 
that makes everybody happy and comfortable, 
isn’t it, mother?” 

“Ah, child, I’m afraid there’s no Gospel will 
do that here below.” 

“Well, I can do something to comfort Mrs. 
Crewe at least; so give mea kiss, and good-by till 
church-time. ” 

The mother leaned back in her chair when Janet 
was gone, and sank into a painful reverie. When 


8 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


our life is a continuous trial, the moments of res- 
pite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread 
for the heaviness of actual suffering: the curtain 
of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may 
measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and 
imminent, in contrast with the transient bright- 
ness; the water-drops that visit the parched lips 
in the desert bear with them only the keen 1magi- 
nation of thirst. Janet looked glad and tender 
now — but what scene of misery was coming next. 
She was too like the cistus flowers in the little 
garden before the window, that, with the shades 
of evening, might le with the delicate white and 
glossy dark of their petals trampled in the road- 
side dust. When the sun had sunk, and the 
twilight was deepening, Janet might be sitting 
there, heated, maddened, sobbing out her griefs 
with selfish passion, and wildly wishing herself 
dead. 

Mrs. Raynor had been reading about the lost 
sheep, and the joy there is in heaven over the sin- 
ner that repenteth. Surely the eternal love she 
believed in through all the sadness of her lot, 
would not leave her child to wander farther and 
farther into the wilderness till there was no turn- 
ing, —the child so lovely, so pitiful to others, so 
good, —till she was goaded into sin by woman’s 
bitterest sorrows! Mrs. Raynor had her faith and 
her spiritual comforts, though she was not in the 
least evangelical, and knew nothing of doctrinal 
zeal. JI fear most of Mr. Tryan’s hearers would 
have considered her destitute of saving knowledge, 
and I am quite sure she had no well-defined views 
on justification. Nevertheless, she read her Bible 
a great deal, and thought she found divine lessons 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 9 


there, — how to bear the cross meekly, and be mer- 
ciful. Let us hope that there is a saving ignorance, 
and that Mrs. Raynor was justified without know- 
ing exactly how. 

She tried to have hope and trust, though it was 
hard to believe that the future would be anything 
else than the harvest of the seed that was being 
sown before her eyes. But always there is seed 
being sown silently and unseen, and everywhere 
there come sweet flowers without our foresight or 
labour. We reap what we sow, but Nature has 
love over and above that justice, and gives us 
shadow and blossom and fruit that spring from no 
planting of ours. 


CHAPTER VI. 


Most people must have agreed with Mrs. Raynor 
that the Confirmation that day was a pretty sight, 
at least when those slight girlish forms and fair 
young faces moved in a white rivulet along the 
aisles, and flowed into kneeling semicircles under 
the light of the great chancel window, softened by 
patches of dark old painted glass; and one would 
think that to look on while a pair of venerable 
hands pressed such young heads, and a venerable 
face looked upward for a blessing on them, would 
be very likely to make the heart swell gently, and 
to moisten the eyes. Yet I remember the eyes 
seemed very dry in Milby Church that day, not- 
withstanding that the Bishop was an old man, and 
probably venerable (for though he was not an emi- 
nent Grecian, he was the brother of a Whig lord) ; 
and I think the eyes must have remained dry, 
because he had small delicate womanish hands 
adorned with ruffles, and, instead of laying them 
on the girls’ heads, just let them hover over each 
in quick succession, as if it were not etiquette 
to touch them, and as if the laying on of hands 
were like the theatrical embrace, —part of the 
play, and not to be really believed in. To be 
sure, there were a great many heads, and the 
Bishop’s time was limited. Moreover, a wig can, 
under no circumstances, be affecting, except in 
rare cases of illusion; and copious lawn-sleeves 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. II 


cannot be expected to go directly to any heart ex- 
cept a washerwoman’s. 

I know Ned Phipps, who knelt against me, and 
I am sure made me behave much worse than I 
should have done without him, whispered that he 
thought the Bishop was a “ guy,” and I certainly 
remember thinking that Mr. Prendergast looked 
much more dignified with his plain white surplice 
and black hair. He was a tall commanding man, 
and read the Liturgy in a strikingly sonorous and 
uniform voice, which I tried to imitate the next 
Sunday at home, until my little sister began to 
cry, and said I was “ yoaring at her.” 

Mr. Tryan sat in a pew near the pulpit with 
several other clergymen. He looked pale, and 
rubbed his hand over his face and pushed back his 
hair oftener than usual. Standing in the aisle 
close to him, and repeating the responses with 
edifying loudness, was Mr. Budd, churchwarden 
and delegate, with a white staff in his hand and a 
backward bend of his small head and person, such 
as, I suppose, he considered suitable to a friend of 
sound religion. Conspicuous in the gallery, too, 
was the tall figure of Mr. Dempster, whose pro- 
fessional avocations rarely allowed him to occupy 
his place at church. 

“There ’s Dempster,” said Mrs. Linnet to her 
daughter Mary, “looking more respectable than 
usual, I declare. He’s gota fine speech by heart 
to make to the Bishop, I’ll answer for it. But 
he ’ll be pretty well sprinkled with snuff before 
service is over, and the Bishop won’t be able to 
listen to him for sneezing, that ’s one comfort.” 

At length the last stage in the long ceremony 
was over, the large assembly streamed warm and 


12 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


weary into the open afternoon sunshine, and the 
Bishop retired to the Parsonage, where, after hon- 
ouring Mrs. Crewe’s collation, he was to give audi- 
ence to the delegates and Mr. Tryan on the great 
question of the evening lecture. 

Between five and six o’clock the Parsonage was 
once more as quiet as usual under the shadow of 
its tall elms, and the only traces of the Bishop's 
recent presence there were the wheel-marks on the 
eravel, and the long table with its garnished 
dishes awry, its damask sprinkled with crumbs, 
and its decanters without their stoppers. Mr. 
Crewe was already calmly smoking his pipe in the 
opposite sitting-room, and Janet was agreeing with 
Mrs. Crewe that some of the blancmange would 
be a nice thing to take to Sally Martin, while the 
little old lady herself had a spoon in her hand 
ready to gather the crumbs into a plate, that she 
might scatter them on the gravel for the little 
birds. 

Before that time the Bishop’s carriage had been 
seen driving through the High Street on its way to 
Lord Trufford’s, where he was to dine. The ques- 
tion of the lecture was decided, then ? 

The nature of the decision may be gathered from 
the following conversation which took place in the 
bar of the Red Lion that evening. 

“So you’re done, eh, Dempster?” was Mr. 
Pilgrim’s observation, uttered with some gusto. 
He was not glad Mr. Tryan had gained his point, 
but he was not sorry Dempster was disappointed. 

‘Dover, since Nottcaumalls: Jtas*whateleanticr 
pated. I knew we had nothing else to expect in 
these days, when the Church is infested by a set 
of men who are only fit to give out hymns from 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 13 


an empty cask, to tunes set by a journeyman cob- 
bler. But I was not the less to exert myself in 
the cause of sound Churchmanship for the good of 
the town. Any coward can fight a battle when 
he’s sure of winning; but give me the man who 
has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. 
That ’s my way, sir; and there are many victories 
worse than a defeat, as Mr. Tryan shall learn to 
his cost.” 

“He must be a poor shuperannyated sort of a 
bishop, that’s my opinion,” said Mr. Tomlinson, 
“to go along with a sneaking Methodist lke 
Tryan. And, for my part, I think we should be 
as well wi’out bishops, if they ’re no wiser than 
that. Where’s the use 0’ havin’ thousands a-year 
an’ livin’ in a pallis, if they don’t stick to the 
Church ? ” 

“No. There you’re going out of your depth, 
Tomlinson,” said Mr. Dempster. “ No one shall 
hear me say a word against Episcopacy, — it 1s a 
safeguard of the Church; we must have ranks and 
dignities there as well as everywhere else. No, 
sir! Episcopacy is a good thing; but it may hap- 
pen that a bishop is not a good thing. Just as 
brandy is a good thing, though this particular 
brandy is British, and tastes lke sugared rain- 
water caught down the chimney. Here, Ratclifie, 
let me have something to drink a little less like 
a decoction of sugar and soot. ” 

“J said nothing again’ Episcopacy,’ returned 
Mr. Tomlinson. “I only said I thought we 
should do as well wi’out bishops; an’ I’ll say it 
again for the matter o’ that. Bishops never 
brought any grist to my mill.” ate 

“Do you know when the lectures are to begin ¢ 
said Mr. Pilgrim. 


? 


14 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


“They are to begin on Sunday next,” said Mr. 
Dempster, in a significant tone; “ but I think it 
will not take a long-sighted prophet to foresee the 
end of them. It strikes me Mr. Tryan will be 
looking out for another curacy shortly. ” 

“He ’ll not get many Milby people to go and 
hear his lectures after a while, Ill bet a guinea,” 
observed Mr. Budd. “I know I’ll not keep a 
single workman on my ground who either goes to 
the lecture himself or lets anybody belonging to 
him go,” 

“ Nor me nayther,” said Mr. Tomlinson. “No 
Tryanite shall touch a sack or drive a wagon 0’ 
mine, that you may depend on. An’ I know 
more besides me as are o’ the same mind.” 

“Tryan has a good many friends in the town, 
though, and friends that are likely to stand by 
him too,” said Mr. Pilgrim. “I should say it 
would be as well to let him and his lectures alone. 
It he goes on preaching as he does, with such a 
constitution as his, he ’ll get a relaxed throat by 
and by, and you’ll be rid of him without any 
trouble. ” 

“We'll not allow him to do himself that in- 
jury,” said Mr. Dempster. “Since his health is 
not good, we ’ll persuade him to try change of air. 
Depend upon it, he ’ll find the climate of Milby 
too hot for him.” 


CTA PIER Vil 


Mr. Dempster did not stay long at the Red Lion 
that evening. He was summoned home to meet 
Mr. Armstrong, a wealthy client; and as he was 
kept in consultation till a late hour, it happened 
that this was one of the nights on which Mr. 
Dempster went to bed tolerably sober. Thus the 
day which had been one of Janet’s happiest, be- 
cause it had been spent by_her in helping her dear 
old friend Mrs. Crewe, ended for her with unusual 
quietude; and as a bright sunset promises a fair 
morning, so a calm lying down is a good augury 
for a calm waking. Mr. Dempster, on the Thurs- 
day morning, was in one of his best humours, and 
though perhaps some of the good-humour might 
result from the prospect of a lucrative and exciting 
bit of business in Mr. Armstrong’s probable law- 
suit, the greater part of it was doubtless due to 
those stirrings of the more kindly, healthy sap of 
human feeling, by which goodness tries to get the 
upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the 
slightest chance, —on Sunday mornings, perhaps, 
when we are set free from the grinding hurry of 
the week, and take the little three-year-old on our 
knee at breakfast to share our egg and muffin; in 
moments of trouble, when death visits our roof or 
illness makes us dependent on the tending hand 
of a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged 
mother, of the days when we stood at her knee 


16 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


with our first picture-book, or wrote her loving let- 
ters from school. In the man whose childhood has 
known caresses there is always a fibre of memory 
that can be touched to gentle issues; and Mr. 
Dempster, whom you have hitherto seen only as 
the orator of the Red Lion, and the drunken tyrant 
of a dreary midnight home, was the first-born 
darling son of a fair little mother. That mother 
was living still; and her own large black easy- 
chair, where she sat knitting through the livelong 
day, was now set ready for her at the breakfast- 
table by her son’s side, a sleek tortoise-shell cat 
acting as provisional incumbent. 

“Good morning, Mamsey! why, you ’re looking 
as fresh as a daisy this morning. Youre getting 
young again,” said Mr. Dempster, looking up from 
his newspaper when the little old lady entered. 
A very little old lady she was, with a pale, 
scarcely wrinkled face, hair of that peculiar white 
which tells that the locks have once been blond, 
a natty pure white cap on her head, and a white 
shawl pinned over her shoulders. You saw at a 
glance that she had been a mignonne blonde, 
strangely unlike her tall, ugly, dingy-complex- 
ioned son; unlike her daughter-in-law, too, whose 
large-featured brunette beauty seemed always 
thrown into higher relief by the white presence 
of little Mamsey. The unlikeness between Janet 
and her mother-in-law went deeper than outline 
and complexion, and indeed there was little sym- 
pathy between them, for old Mrs. Dempster had 
not yet learned to believe that her gon, Robert, 
would have gone wrong if he had married the right 
woman, — a meek woman like herself, who would 
have borne him children, and been a deft, orderly 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 17 


housekeeper. In spite of Janet’s tenderness and 
attention to her, she had had little love for her 
daughter-in-law from the first, and had witnessed 
the sad srowth of home-misery through long years, 
always with a disposition to lay the blame on the 
wife rather than on the husband, and to reproach 
Mrs. Raynor for encouraging her daughter’s faults 
by a too exclusive sympathy. But old Mrs. 
Dempster had that rare gift of silence and passiv- 
ity which often supplies the absence of mental 
strength; and whatever were her thoughts, she 
said no word to aggravate the domestic discord. 
Patient and mute she sat at her knitting through 
many a scene of quarrel! and anguish; resolutely 
she appeared unconscious of the sounds that 
reached her ears, and the facts she divined after 
she had retired to her bed; mutely she witnessed 
poor Janet’s faults, only registering them as a 
balance of excuse on the side of her son. The 
hard, astute, domineering attorney was still that 
little old woman’s pet, as he had been when she 
watched with triumphant pride his first tumbling 
effort to march alone across the nursery floor. 
“See what a good son he is to me!” she often 
thought. “Never gave me a harsh word. And 
so he might have been a good husband.” 

Oh, it is piteous,— that sorrow of aged women! 
In early youth, perhaps, they said to themselves, 
“T shall be happy when I have a husband to love 
me best of all;” then when the husband was too 
careless, “My child will comfort me;” then, 
through the mother’s watching and toil, “My 
child will repay me all when it grows up.” And 
at last, after the long journey of years has been 
wearily travelled through, the mother’s heart 1s 

VOL. 11. — 2 


18 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


weighed down by a heavier burden, and no hope 
temains but the grave. 

But this morning old Mrs. Dempster sat down 
in her easy-chair without any painful, suppressed 
remembrance of the preceding night. 

“JT declare mammy looks younger than Mrs. 
Crewe, who is only sixty-five,” said Janet. “ Mrs. 
Crewe will come to see you to-day, mammy, and 
tell you all about her troubles with the Bishop 
and the collation. She ’ll bring her knitting, and 
you ’ll«have a regular gossip together. ” 

“The gossip will be all on one side, then, for 
Mrs. Crewe gets so very deaf I can’t make her 
hear a word. And if I motion to her, she always 
understands me wrong.” 

“Oh, she will have so much to tell you to-day, 
you will not want to speak yourself. You who 
have patience to knit those wonderful counter- 
panes, mammy, must not be impatient with dear 
Mrs. Crewe. Good old lady! I can’t bear her to 
think she’s ever tiresome to people, and you know 
she’s very ready to fancy herself in the way. I 
think she would like to shrink up to the size of a 
mouse, that she might run about and do people 
good without their poticing her,’ 

“It isn’t patience I-want, God knows; it’s 
lungs to speak loud enough. But you ‘ll be at 
home yourself, I suppose, Ane morning; and you 
can talk to her for me.’ 

“No, mammy; I promised poor Mrs. Lowme to 
go and sit with her. She’s confined to her room, 
and both the Miss Lowmes are out; so I’m going 
to read the newspaper to her and amuse her.” 

“Couldn’t you go another morning? As Mr. 
Armstrong and that other gentleman are coming 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 19 


to dinner, I should think it would be better to 
stay at home. Can you trust Betty to see to 
everything? She’s new to the place.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t disappoint Mrs. Lowme; I 
promised her. Betty will do very well, no fear. ” 

Old Mrs. Dempster was silent after this, and 
began tu sip her tea. The breakfast went on with- 
out further conversation for some time, Mr. Demp- 
ster being absorbed in the papers. At length, when 
he was running over the advertisements, his eye 
seemed to be caught by something that suggested . 
a new thought to him. He presently thumped the 
table with an air of exultation, and said, turning 
to Janet, — 

“T’ve a capital idea, Gypsy!” (that was his 
name for his dark-eyed wife when he was in an 
extraordinarily good humour), “ and you shall help 
me. It’s just what you ’re up to.” 

“What is it?” said Janet, her face beaming at 
the sound of the pet name, now heard so seldom. 
“ Anything to do with conveyancing ?” 

“It’s a bit of fun worth a dozen fees, —a plan 
for raising a laugh against Tryan and his gang of 
hypocrites. ” 

“What is it? Nothing that wants a needle and 
thread, I hope, else I must go and tease mother. ” 

“No, nothing sharper than your wit — except 
mine. Ill tell you what it is We'll get upa 
programme of the Sunday evening lecture, like a 
play-bill, you know, — ‘ Grand Performance of the 
celebrated Mountebank,’ and soon. Well bring 
in the Tryanites—old Landor and the rest — in 
appropriate characters. Proctor shall print it, and 
we ’ll circulate it in the town. It will be a capital 
hiti? 


20 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


“Bravo!” said Janet, clapping her hands. She 
would just then have pretended to like almost any- 
thing, in her pleasure at being appealed to by her 
husband, and she really did like to laugh at the 
Tryanites. “We'll set about it directly, and 
sketch it out before you go to the office. I ‘ve got 
Tryan’s sermons upstairs, but I don’t think 
there ’s anything in them we can use. I’ve only 
just looked into them; they ’re not at all what I 
expected, — dull, stupid things, — nothing of the 
_roaring fire-and-brimstone sort that I expected.” 

“Roaring? No; Tryan’s as soft as a sucking 
dove, —one of your honey-mouthed hypocrites. 
Plenty of devil and malice in him, though, I could 
see that, while he was talking to the Bishop; but 
as smooth as a snake outside. He’s beginning a 
single-handed fight with me, I can see, — per- 
suading my clients away from me. We shall see 
who will be the first to cry peccavi. Milby will 
do better without Mr. Tryan than without Robert 
Dempster, I fancy! and Milby shall never be 
flooded with cant as long as I can raise a break- 
water against it. But now, get the breakfast-things 
cleared away, and let us set about the play-bill. 
Come, Mamsey, come and have a walk with me 
round the garden, and let us see how the cucum- 
bers are getting on. I’ve never taken you round 
the garden for an age. Come, you don’t want a 
bonnet. It’s like walking in a greenhouse this 
morning. ” 

“But she will want a parasol,” said Janet. 
“There ’s one on the stand against the garden-door, 
Robert. ” 

The little old lady took her son’s arm with 
placid pleasure. She could barely reach it so as 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. oT 


to rest upon it, but he inclined a little towards 
her, and accommodated his heavy long-limbed 
steps to her feeble pace. The cat chose to sun 
herself too, and walked close beside them, with 
tail erect, rubbing her sleek sides against their 
legs, —too well fed to be excited by the twittering 
birds. The garden was of the grassy, shady kind, 
often seen attached to old houses in provincial 
towns; the apple-trees had had time to spread 
their branches very wide, the shrubs and hardy 
perennial plants had grown into a luxuriance that 
required constant trimming to prevent them from 
intruding on the space for walking. But the 
farther end, which united with green fields, was 
open and sunny. 

It was rather sad, and yet pretty, to see that 
little group passing out of the shadow into the 
sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shadow 
again: sad, because this tenderness of the son for 
the mother was hardly more than a nucleus of 
healthy life in an organ hardening by disease, be- 
cause the man who was linked in this way with 
an innocent past had become callous in worldli- 
ness, fevered by sensuality, enslaved by chance 
impulses; pretty, because it showed how hard it 
is to kill the deep-down fibrous roots of human 
love and goodness, — how the man from whom we 
make it our pride to shrink has yet a close brother- 
hood with us through some of our most sacred 
feelings. 

As they were returning to the house, Janet met 
them, and said, “ Now, Robert, the writing things 
are ready. I shall be clerk, and Mat Paine can 
copy it out after.” 

Mammy once more deposited in her arm-chair, 


22 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


with her knitting in her hand, and the cat purring 
at her elbow, Janet seated herself at the table, 
while Mr. Dempster placed himself near her, took 
out his snuff-box, and plentifully suffusing himself 
with the inspiring powder, began to dictate. 

What he dictated, we shall see by and by. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE next day, Friday, at five o'clock by the sun- 
dial, the large bow-window of Mrs. Jerome’s parlour 
was open; and that lady herself was seated within 
its ample semicircle, having a table before her on 
which her best tea-tray, her best china, and her 
best urn-rug had already been standing in readiness 
for half an hour. Mrs. Jerome’s best tea-service 
was of delicate white fluted china, with gold sprigs 
upon it, —as pretty a tea-service as you need wish 
to see, and quite good enough for chimney orna- 
ments; indeed, as the cups were without handles, 
most visitors who had the distinction of taking tea 
out of them wished that such charming china had 
already been promoted to that honorary position. 
Mrs. Jerome was like her china, handsome and old- 
fashioned. She was a buxom lady of sixty, in an 
elaborate lace cap fastened by a frill under her chin, 
a dark, well-curled front concealing her forehead, a 
snowy neckerchief exhibiting its ample folds as far 
as her waist, and a stiff gray silk gown. She had a 
clean damask napkin pinned before her to guard her 
dress during the process of tea-making ; her favour- 
ite geraniums in the bow-window were looking as 
healthy as she could desire ; her own handsome por- 
trait, painted when she was twenty years younger, 
was smiling down on her with agreeable flattery , 
and altogether she seemed to be in as peaceful and 
pleasant a position as a buxom, well-dressed elderly 


24 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


lady need desire. But, as in so many other cases, 
appearances were deceptive. Her mind was greatly 
perturbed and her temper ruffled by the fact that 
it was more than a quarter-past five even by the 
losing timepiece, that it was half-past by her large 
eold watch, which she held in her hand as if she 
were counting the pulse of the afternoon, and that 
by the kitchen clock, which she felt sure was not an 
hour too fast, it had already struck six. The lapse 
of time was rendered the more unendurable to Mrs. 
Jerome by her wonder that Mr. Jerome could stay 
out in the garden with Lizzie in that thoughtless 
way, taking it so easily that tea-time was long past, 
and that, after all the trouble of getting down the 
best tea-things, Mr. Tryan would not come. 

This honour had been shown to Mr. Tryan, not at 
all because Mrs. Jerome had any high appreciation 
of his doctrine or of his exemplary activity as a pas- 
tor, but simply because he was a “Church clerey- 
man,’ and as such was regarded by her with the 
same sort of exceptional respect that a white woman 
who had married a native of the Society Islands 
might be supposed to feel towards a white-skinned 
visitor from the land of her youth. For Mrs. Jerome 
had been reared a Churchwoman, and having attained 
the age of thirty before she was married, had 
felt the greatest repugnance in the first: instance to 
renouncing the religious forms in which she had 
been brought up. “ You know,” she said in confi- 
dence to her Church acquaintances, “I would n’t 
give no ear at all to Mr. Jerome at fust; but after 
all, I begun to think as there was a many things 
worse nor goin’ to chapel, an’ you’d better do that 
nor not pay your way. Mr. Jerome had a very 
pleasant manner with him, an’ there was niver 


JANETS REPENTANCE. 25 


another as kept a gig, an’ ud make a settlement on 
me like him, chapel or no chapel. It seemed very 
odd to me for a long while, the preachin’ without 
book, an’ the stannin’ up to one long prayer, istid 0’ 
changin’ your postur. But la! there’s nothin’ as 
you mayn’t get used to 7 time; you can al’ys sit 
down, you know, before the prayer’s done. The 
ministers say pretty nigh the same things as the 
Church parsons, by what I could iver make out, 
an’ we ’re out 0’ chapel i’ the mornin’ a deal sooner 
nor they ’re out o’ church. An’ as for pews, ours 1s 
a deal comfortabler nor any i) Milby Church.” 

Mrs. Jerome, you perceive, had not a keen sus- 
ceptibility to shades of doctrine, and it is probable 
that, after listening to Dissenting eloquence for 
thirty years, she might safely have re-entered the 
Establishment without performing any spiritual 
quarantine. Her mind, apparently, was of that 
non-porous flinty character which is not in the least 
danger from surrounding damp. But on the ques- 
tion of getting start of the sun on the day’s business, 
and clearing her conscience of the necessary sum of 
meals and the consequent “washing up” as soon 
ag possible, so that the family might be well in bed 
at nine, Mrs. Jerome was susceptible; and the pre- 
sent lingering pace of things, united with Mr. 
Jerome’s unaccountable obliviouness, was not to be 
borne any longer. So she rang the bell for Sally. 

“Goodness me, Sally! go into the garden an’ see 
after your master. Tell him it’s goin’ on for six, 
an’ Mr. Tryan ‘ull niver think o’ comin’ now, an’ 
it’s time we got tea over. An’ he’s lettin’ Lizzie 
stain her frock, I expect, among them strawberry- 
beds. Make her come in this minute.” 

No wonder Mr. Jerome was tempted to linger in 


26 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


the garden, for though the house was pretty and well 
deserved its name, the “White House,” the tall 
damask roses that clustered over the porch being 
thrown into relief by rough stucco of the most brill- 
iant white, yet the garden and orchards were Mr. 
Jerome’s glory, as well they might be; and there 
was nothing in which he had a more innocent pride 
— peace to a good man’s memory! all his pride was 
innocent — than in conducting a hitherto unini- 
tiated visitor over his grounds, and making him in 
some degree aware of the incomparable advantages 
possessed by the inhabitants of the White House in 
the matter of red-streaked apples, russets, northern 
greens (excellent for baking), swan-egg pears, and 
early vegetables, to say nothing of flowering “ srubs,” 
pink hawthorns, lavender bushes more than ever 
Mrs. Jerome could use, and in short, a superabun- 
dance of everything that a person retired from busi- 
ness could desire to possess himself or to share with 
his friends. The garden was one of those old-fash- 
ioned paradises which hardly exist any longer except 
as memories of our childhood: no finical separation 
between flower and kitchen garden there ; no monot- 
ony of enjoyment for one sense to the exclusion of 
another; but a charming paradisiacal mingling of 
all that was pleasant to the eyes and good for food. 
The rich flower-border running along every walk, 
with its endless succession of spring flowers, ane- 
mones, auriculas, wall-flowers, sweet-williams, cam- 
panulas, snapdragons, and tiger-lilies, had its taller 
beauties, such as moss and Provence roses, varied 
with espalier apple-trees ; the crimson of a carnation 
was carried out in the lurking crimson of the neigh- 
bouring strawberry-beds; you gathered a moss-rose 
one moment and a bunch of currants the next; you 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 27 


were in a delicious fluctuation between the scent of 
jasmine and the juice of gooseberries. Then what 
a high wall at one end, flanked by a summer-house 
so lofty that after ascending its long flight of steps 
you could see perfectly well there was no view 
worth looking at; what alcoves and garden-seats in 
all directions; and along one side, what a hedge, 
tall and firm and unbroken, like a green wall! 

It was near this hedge that Mr. Jerome was stand- 
ing when Sally found him. He had set down the 
basket of strawberries on the gravel, and had lifted 
up little Lizzie in his arms to look at a bird’s-nest. 
Lizzie peeped, and then looked at her grandpa with 
round blue eyes, and then peeped again. 

“)’ ye see it, Lizzie?” he whispered. 

“Yes,” she whispered in return, putting her lips 
very near grandpa’s face. At this moment Sally 
appeared. 

“Eh, eh, Sally, what’s the matter? Is Mr. 
Tryan come ?” 

“No, sir, an’ Missis says she’s sure he won’t come 
now, an’ she wants you to come in an’ hev tea. 
Dear heart, Miss Lizzie, you’ve stained your pina- 
fore, an’ I should n’t wonder if it’s gone through to 
your frock. There’ll be fine work! Come along 
wi’ me, do!” 

“Nay, nay, nay, we’ve done no harm, we ve 
done no harm, hev we, Lizzie? The washtub ull 
make all right again.” 

Sally, regarding the washtub from a different 
point of view, looked sourly serious, and hurried 
away with Lizzie, who trotted submissively along, 
her little head in eclipse under a large nankin 
bonnet, while Mr. Jerome followed leisurely with 
his full broad shoulders in rather a stooping 


28 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


posture, and his large good-natured features and 
white locks shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. 

“Mr, Jerome, I wonder at you,” said Mrs. 
Jerome, in a tone of indignant remonstrance, evi- 
dently sustained by a deep sense of injury, as her 
husband opened the parlour door. “ When will you 
leave off invitin’ people to meals an’ not lettin’ 
‘em know the time? I’ll answer for ’t, you 
niver said a word to Mr, Tryan as we should take 
tea at five o'clock. It’s just like you!” 

“Nay, nay, Susan,” answered the husband, in 
a soothing tone, “there’s nothin’ amiss. I told 
Mr. Tryan as we took tea at five punctial; mayhap 
summat ’s a-detainin’ on him. He’s a deal to do 
an’ to think on, remember, ” 

“Why, it’s struck six i’ the kitchen a’ready. 
It ’s nonsense to look for him comin’ now. So you 
may 8s well ring for th’ urn. Now Sally’s got th’ 
heater in the fire, we may ’s well hev th’ urn in, 
though he does n’t come. I niver see’d the like 
o' you, Mr. Jerome, for axin’ people an’ givin’ me 
the trouble o’ gettin’ things down an’ hevin’ 
erumpets made, an’ after all they don’t come. 
I shall hev to wash every one o’ these tea-things 
myself, for there ’s no trustin’ Sally,— she’d break 
a fortin i’ crockery 1’ no time! ” 

“But why will you give yourself sich trouble, 
Susan? Our every-day tea-things would ha’ done 
as well for Mr. Tryan, an’ they’re a deal con- 
vVenenter tonhold | 

“Yes, that’s just your way, Mr. Jerome, you’re 
al’ys a-findin’ faut wi’ my chany, because I bought 
it myself afore I was married. But let me tell you, 
I knowed how to choose chany if I didn’t know 
how to choose a husband. An’ where’s Lizzie ? 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 29 


You ’ve niver left her ? the garden by herself, with 
her white frock on an’ clean stockin’s ?” 

“ Be easy, my dear Susan, be easy ; Lizzie’s come 
in wi Sally. She’s hevin’ her pinafore took off, Ill 
be bound. Ah! there’s Mr. Tryan a-comin’ through 
the gate.” 

Mrs. Jerome began hastily to adjust her damask 
napkin and the expression of her countenance for 
the reception of the clergyman; and Mr. Jerome 
went out to meet his guest, whom he greeted out- 
side the door. 

“Mr. Tryan, how do you do, Mr. Tryan? Wel- 
come to the White House! I’m glad to see you, 
sir, — I’m glad to see you.” 

If you had heard the tone of mingled good-will, 
veneration, and condolence in which this greeting 
was uttered, even without seeing the face that com- 
pletely harmonized with it, you would have no diffi- 
culty in inferring the ground-notes of Mr. Jerome’s 
character. To a fine ear that tone said as plainly 
as possible: “ Whatever recommends itself to me, 
Thomas Jerome, as piety and goodness, shall have 
my love and honour. Ah, friends, this pleasant 
world is a sad one too, isn’t it? Let us help one 
another, let us help one another.” And it was 
entirely owing to this basis of character, not at all 
from any clear and precise doctrinal discrimination, 
that Mr. Jerome had very early in life become a 
Dissenter. In his boyish days he had been thrown 
where Dissent seemed to have the balance of piety, 
purity, and good works on its side, and to become a 
Dissenter seemed to him identical with choosing God 
instead of mammon. That race of Dissenters 1s 
extinct in these days, when opinion has got far 
ahead of feeling, and every chapel-going youth can 


30 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


fill our ears with the advantages of the Voluntary 
system, the corruptions of a State Church, and the 
Scriptural evidence that the first Christians were 
Congregationalists. Mr. Jerome knew nothing of 
this theoretic basis for Dissent, and in the utmost 
extent of his polemical discussion he had not gone 
further than to question whether a Christian man 
was bound in conscience to distinguish Christmas 
and Easter by any peculiar observance beyond the 
eating of mince-pies and cheese-cakes. It seemed 
to him that all seasons were alike good for thank- 
ing God, departing from evil and doing well, whereas 
it might be desirable to restrict the period for 
indulging in unwholesome forms of pastry. Mr. 
Jerome’s dissent being of this simple, non-polemical 
kind, it is easy to understand that the report he 
heard of Mr. Tryan as a good man and a powerful 
preacher, who was stirring the hearts of the people, 
had been enough to attract him to the Paddiford 
Church, and that having felt himself more edified 
there than he had of late been under Mr. Stickney’s 
discourses at Salem, he had driven thither repeat- 
edly in the Sunday afternoons, and had sought an 
opportunity of making Mr. Tryan’s acquaintance. 
The evening lecture was a subject of warm interest 
with him, and the opposition Mr. Tryan met with 
gave that interest a strong tinge of partisanship; for 
there was a store of irascibility in Mr. Jerome’s 
nature which must find a vent somewhere, and in 
so kindly and upright a man could only find it in 
indignation against those whom he held to be ene- 
mies of truth and goodness. Mr. Tryan had not 
hitherto been to the White House; but yesterday, 
meeting Mr. Jerome in the street, he had at once 
accepted the invitation to tea, saying there was 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 31 


something he wished to talk about. He appeared 
worn and fatigued now, and after shaking hands 
with Mrs. Jerome, threw himself into a chair and 
looked out on the pretty garden with an air of relief. 

“What a nice place you have here, Mr. Jerome! 
I’ve not seen anything so quiet and pretty since 
I came to Milby. On Paddiford Common, where I 
live, you know, the bushes are all sprinkled with 
soot, and there’s never any quiet except in the dead 
of night.” 

“Dear heart! dear heart! That’s very bad, — 
and for you, too, as hev to study. Wouldn't it be 
better for you to be somewhere more out 1’ the coun- 
try like?” 

“Oh, no! I should lose so much time in going to 
and fro; and besides, I like to be among the people. 
I’ve no face to go and preach resignation to those 
poor things in their smoky air and comfortless 
homes, when I come straight from every luxury 
myself. There are many things quite lawful for 
other men, which a clergyman must forego if he 
would do any good in a manufacturing population 
hike this.” 

Here the preparations for tea were crowned by 
the simultaneous appearance of Lizzie and the crum- 
pet. Itisa pretty surprise, when one visits an elderly 
couple, to see a little figure enter in a white frock 
with a blond head as smooth as satin, round blue 
eyes, and a cheek like an apple-blossom. A tod- 
dling little girl is a centre of common feeling which 
makes the most dissimilar people understand each 
other; and Mr. Tryan looked at Lizzie with that 
quiet pleasure which is always genuine. 

« Here we are, here we are!” said proud grandpapa. 
“You didn’t think we’d got such a little gell as 


32 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 
this, did you, Mr. Tryan? Why, it seems but th’ 


other day since her mother was just such another. 
This is our little Lizzie, this is. Come an’ shake 
hands wi’ Mr. Tryan, Lizzie; come.” 

Lizzie advanced without hesitation, and put out 
one hand, while she fingered her coral necklace with 
the other, and looked up into Mr. Tryan’s face with 
a reconnoitring gaze. He stroked the satin head, 
and said in his gentlest voice, “How do you do, 
Lizzie ? will you give mea kiss?” She put up her 
little bud of a mouth, and then retreating a little 
and glancing down at her frock, said, — 

“Dit id my noo fock. I put it on ’tod you wad 
toming. Tally taid you would n't ’ook at it.” 

“Hush, hush, Lizzie! little gells must be seen 
amd not heard,” said Mrs. Jerome; while grand- 
papa, winking significantly, and looking radiant 
with delight at Lizzie’s extraordinary promise of 
cleverness, set her up on her high cane-chair by the 
side of grandma, who lost no time in shielding the 
beauties of the new frock with a napkin. 

“Well now, Mr. Tryan,” said Mr. Jerome, in a 
very serious tone when tea had been distributed, 
“let me hear how you’re a-goin’ on about the lectur. 
When I was i’ the town yisterday, I heared as there 
was pessecutin’ schemes a-bein’ laid again’ you. I 
fear me those raskills ll mek things very onpleasant 
to you.” 

“T’ve no doubt they will attempt it; indeed, I 
quite expect there will be a regular mob got up on 
Sunday evening, as there was when the delegates 
returned, on purpose to annoy me and the congre- 
gation on our way to church.” 

“ Ah, they ’re capible o’ anything, such men as 


=? 


Dempster an’ Budd; an’ Tomlinson backs ‘em wi’ 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 33 


money, though he can’t wi’ brains. Howiver, 
Dempster’s lost one client by his wicked doin’s, 
an’ I’m deceived if he won’t lose more nor one. 
I little thought, Mr. Tryan, when I put my affairs 
into his hands twenty ‘ear ago this Michaelmas, 
as he was to turn out a pessecutor o’ religion. I 
niver lighted on a cliverer, promisiner young man 
nor he was then. They talked of his bein’ fond of 
a extry glass now an’ then, but niver nothin’ like 
what he’s come to since. An’ it’s head-piece 
you must look for in a lawyer, Mr. Tryan, it’s 
head-piece. His wife, too, was al’ys an uncom- 
mon favourite 0’ mine, —poor thing! I hear sad 
stories about her now. But she’s druv to it, she’s 
druv to it, Mr. Tryan. A tender-hearted woman 
to the poor, she is, as iver lived; an’ as pretty- 
spoken a woman as you need wish to talk to. 
Yes ! I’d al’ys a likin’ for Dempster an’ his wife, 
spite 0’ iverything. But as soon as iver I heared 
o’ that dilegate business, I says, says I, that man 
shall hev no more to do wi’ my affairs. It may 
put me t’ inconvenience, but I?ll encourage no 
man as pessecutes religion. ” 

“He is evidently the brain and hand of the 
persecution,” said Mr. Tryan. “ There may be a 
strong feeling against me in a large number of the 
inhabitants, — it must be so from the great igno- 
rance of spiritual things in this place. But I fancy 
there would have been no formal opposition to the 
lecture, if Dempster had not planned it. I am 
not myself the least alarmed at anything he can 
do; he will find I am not to be cowed or driven 
away by insult or personal danger. God has sent 
me to this place, and, by His blessing, I’ not 
shrink from anything I may have to encounter In 

VOL. 11.—3 


34 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


doing His work among the people. But I feel it 
right to call on all those who know the value of 
the Gospel, to stand by me publicly. I think — 
and Mr. Landor agrees with me—that it will be 
well for my friends to proceed with me ina body 
to the church on Sunday evening. Dempster, you 
know, has pretended that almost all the respecta- 
ble inhabitants are opposed to the lecture. Now, 
I wish that falsehood to be visibly contradicted. 
What do you think of the plan? I have to-day 
been to see several of my friends. who will make 
a point of being there to accompany me, and will 
communicate with others on the subject. ” 

“T’ll make one, Mr. Tryan, 1’ll make one: 
You shall not be wantin’ in any support as I can 
give. Before you come to it, sir, Milby was a 
dead an’ dark place; you are the fust man i’ the 
Church to my knowledge as has brought the word 
o’ God home to the people; an’ I’ll stan’ by you, 
sir, I’ll stan’ by you. I’m a Dissenter, Mr. 
Tryan; I’ve been a Dissenter ever sin’ I was 
fifteen ’ear old; but show me good i’ the Church, 
an’ I’m a Churchman too. When I was a boy I 
lived at Tilston; you mayn’t know the place; 
the best part o’ the land there belonged to Squire 
Sandeman; he ’d a club-foot, had Squire Sande- 
man,— lost a deal 0’ money by canal shares. Well, 
sir, as I was sayin’, I lived at Tilston, an’ the 
rector there was a terrible drinkin’, fox-huntin’ 
man; you niver see’d such a parish 1’ your time 
for wickedness; Milby’s nothin’ to it. Well, sir, 
my father was a workin’ man, an’ could n’t afford 
to gi’ me ony eddication, so I went to a night- 
school as was kep by a Dissenter, one Jacob 
Wright; an’ it was from that man, sir, as I got 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 35 


my little schoolin’ an’ my knowledge o’ religion. 
I went to chapel wi’ Jacob, —he was a good man 
was Jacob, —an’ to chapel I’ve been iver since. 
But I’m no enemy o’ the Church, sir, when the 
Church brings light to the ignorant and the sinful; 
an’ that’s what you ’re a-doin’, Mr. Tryan. Yes, 
sir, I’ stan’ by you. I’ll go to church wi’ you 
o’ Sunday evenin’. ” 

“ Youd far better stay at home, Mr. Jerome, if 
I may give my opinion,” interposed Mrs. Jerome. 
“It’s not as I hevn’t ivery respect for you, Mr. 
Tryan, but Mr. Jerome ’ull do you no good by his 
interferin’. Dissenters are not at all looked on i’ 
Milby, an’ he’s as nervous as iver he can be; he ’1l 
come back as il] as ill, an’ niver let me hev a wink 
o’ sleep all night. ” 

Mrs. Jerome had been frightened at the mention 
of a mob, and her retrospective regard for the reli- 
gious communion of her youth by no means inspired 
her with the temper of a martyr. Her husband 
looked at her with an expression of tender and 
grieved remonstrance, which might have been that 
of the patient patriarch on the memorable occasion 
when he rebuked his wife. 

“Susan, Susan, let me beg on you not to oppose 
me, and put stumblin’-blocks i’ the way o’ doin’ 
what’s right. I can’t give up my conscience, let 
me give up what else I may. ” 

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Tryan, feeling slightly 
uncomfortable, “ since you are not very strong, my 
dear sir, it will be well, as Mrs. Jerome suggests, 
that you should not run the risk of any excitement. ” 

“Say no more, Mr. Tryan. Ill stan’ by you, 
sir It’s my duty. It’s the cause o’ God, sir; 
it’s the cause o’ God.” 


36 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


Mr. Tryan obeyed his impulse of admiration and 
eratitude, and put out his hand to the white-haired 
old man, saying, “ Thank you, Mr Jerome, thank 
you. ” 

Mr. Jerome grasped the proffered hand in silence, 
and then threw himself back in his chair, casting 
a regretful look at his wife, which seemed to say, 
“Why don’t you feel with me, Susan ?” 

The sympathy of this simple-minded old man 
was more precious to Mr. Tryan than any mere 
onlooker could have imagined. To persons pos- 
sessing a great deal of that facile psychology which 
prejudges individuals by means of formule, and 
casts them, without further trouble, into duly 
lettered pigeon-holes, the Evangelical curate might 
seem to be doing simply what all other men hike 
to do,— carrying out objects which were identified 
not only with his theory, which is but a kind of 
secondary egoism, but also with the primary egoism 
of his feelings. Opposition may become sweet to a 
man when he has christened it persecution: a self- 
obtrusive, over hasty reformer complacently dis- 
claiming all merit, while his friends call him a 
martyr, has not in reality a career the most arduous 
to the fleshly mind. But Mr. Tryan was not cast 
in the mould of the gratuitous martyr With a 
power of persistence which had been often blamed 
as obstinacy, he had an acute sensibility to the very 
hatred or ridicule he did not flinch from provoking. 
Every form of disapproval jarred him paintully ; 
and though he fronted his opponents manfully, and 
often with considerable warmth of temper, he had 
no pugnacious pleasure in the contest. It was one 
of the weaknesses of his nature to be too keenly 
alive to every harsh wind of opinion; to wince 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 37 


under the frowns of the foolish; to be irritated by 
the injustice of those who could not possibly have 
the elements indispensable for judging him rightly ; 
and with all this acute sensibility to blame, this 
dependence on sympathy, be had for years been 
constrained into a position of antagonism. No 
wonder, then, that good old Mr. Jerome’s cordial 
words were balm to him. He had often been 
thankful to an old woman for saying “ God bless 
you;” toa little child for smiling at him; toa dog 
for submitting to be patted by him. 

Tea being over by this time, Mr. Tryan proposed 
a walk in the garden as a means of dissipating all 
recollection of the recent conjugal dissidence. 
Little Lizzie’s appeal, “ Me go, gandpa!” could 
not be rejected; so she was duly bonneted and 
pinafored, and then they turned out into the even- 
ing sunshine. Not Mrs. Jerome, however; she 
had a deeply meditated plan of retiring ad interim 
to the kitchen and washing up the best tea-things, 
as a mode of getting forward with the sadly 
retarded business of the day. 

“This way, Mr. Tryan, this way,” said the old 
centleman; “I must take you to my pastur fust, 
an’ show you our cow, — the best milker 1’ the 
country. An’ see here at these back-buildins, how 
convenent the dairy is; I planned it ivery bit my- 
self. An’ here I’ve got my little carpenter’s 
shop an’ my blacksmith’s shop. I do no end 0’ 
jobs here myself. I niver could bear to be idle, 
Mr. Tryan; | must al’ys be at somethin’ or other. 
It was time for me to lay by business an’ mek 
room for younger folks. I’d got money enough 
wi’ only one daughter to leave it to, an’ I says 
to myself, says I, it’s time to leave off moitherin’ 


38 SCENES OF CLERICAL, LIVE. 


myself wi’ this world so much, an’ give more 
time to thinkin’ of another. But there's a 
many hours atween getting up an’ lyin’ down, 
an’ thoughts are no cumber; you can move about 
wi’ a good many on ’em in your head. See, here ‘s 
the pastur. ” 

A very pretty pasture it was, where the large- 
spotted short-horned cow quietly chewed the cud 
as she lay and looked sleepily at her admirers, —a 
daintily trimmed hedge all round, dotted here and 
there with a mountain-ash or a cherry-tree. 

“I’ve a good bit more land besides this, worth 
your while to look at, but mayhap it’s further nor 
you ’d like to walk now. Bless you! I’ve welly 
an acre 0’ potato-ground yonders; I’ve a good big 
family to supply, you know.” (Here Mr. Jerome 
winked and smiled significantly.) “ An’ that puts 
me i’ mind, Mr Tryan, o’ summat I wanted to 
say to you. Clergymen like you, I know, see a 
deal more poverty an’ that than other folks, an’ 
hev a many claims on ’em more nor they can well 
meet; an’ if you ’ll mek use 0’ my purse any time, 
or let me know where I can be o’ any help, IH 
tek it very kind on you.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Jerome, I will do so, I prom- 
ise you. I saw a sad case yesterday ; a collier —a 
tine broad-chested fellow about thirty — was killed 
by the falling of a wall in the Paddiford colliery. 
I was in one of the cottages near, when they 
brought him home on a door, and the shriek of the 
wife has been ringing in my ears ever since. There 
are three little children. Happily the woman has 
her loom, so she will be able to keep out of the 
workhouse; but she looks very delicate.” 

“Give me her name, Mr.- Tryan,” said Mr. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 39 


Jerome, drawing out his pocket-book. “I'l call 
aieccemier ~ * 

Deep was the fountain of pity in the good old 
man’s heart! He often ate his dinner stintingly, 
oppressed by the thought that there were men, 
women, and children with no dinner to sit down 
to, and would relieve his mind by going out in the 
afternoon to look for some need that he could sup- 
ply, some honest struggle in which he could lend 
a helping hand. That any living being should 
want, was his chief sorrow; that any rational 
being should waste, was the next. Sally, indeed, 
having been scolded by master for a too lavish use 
of sticks in lighting the kitchen fire, and various 
instances of recklessness with regard to candle- 
ends, considered him “as mean as aenythink;” 
but he had as kindly a warmth as the morning 
sunlight, and, like the sunlight, his goodness 
shone on all that came in his way, from the saucy 
rosy-cheeked lad whom he delighted to make 
happy with a Christmas box, to the pallid sufferers 
up dim entries, languishing under the tardy death 
of want and misery. 

It was very pleasant to Mr. Tryan to listen to 
the simple chat of the old man, —to walk in the 
shade of the incomparable orchard, and hear the 
story of the crops yielded by the red-streaked 
apple-tree, and the quite embarrassing plentiful- 
ness of the summer-pears, —to drink in the sweet 
evening breath of the garden, as they sat in the 
alcove, —and so, for a short interval, to feel the 
strain of his pastoral task relaxed. 

Perhaps he felt the return to that task through 
the dusty roads all the more painfully, perhaps 
something in that quiet shady home had reminded 


40 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


him of the time before he had taken on him the 
yoke of self-denial. The strongest heart will faint 
sometimes under the feeling that enemies are 
bitter, and that friends only know half its sorrows. 
The most resolute soul will now and then cast 
back a yearning look in treading the rough moun- 
tain-path, away from the greensward and laughing 
voices of the valley, However it was, in the nine 
o’clock twilight that evening, when Mr. Tryan 
had entered his small study and turned the key in 
the door, he threw himself into the chair before 
his writing-table, and, heedless of the papers 
there, leaned his face low on his hand, and moaned 
heavily. 

It. is apt to be so in this life, I think. While 
we are coldly discussing a man’s career, sneering 
at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and label- 
ling his opinions “ Evangelical and narrow,” or 
“Latitudinarian and Pantheistic,” or “ Anglican 
and supercilious,” that man, in his solitude, is per- 
haps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a 
hard one, because strength and patience are failing 
him to speak the difficult word and do the diffi- 
cult deed. 


CHAPTER IX. 


Mr. TrYAN showed no such symptoms of weakness 
on the critical Sunday. He unhesitatingly re- 
jected the suggestion that he should be taken to 
church in Mr. Landor’s carriage, —a proposition 
which that gentleman made as an amendment on 
the original plan, when the rumours of meditated 
insult became alarming. Mr. Tryan declared he 
would have no precautions taken, but would sim- 
ply trust in God and his good cause. Some of his 
more timid friends thought this conduct rather 
defiant than wise, and reflecting that a mob has 
great talents for impromptu, and that legal redress 
is imperfect satisfaction for having one’s head 
broken with a brickbat, were beginning to ques- 
tion their consciences very closely as to whether it 
was not a duty they owed to their families to stay 
at home on Sunday evening. These timorous per- 
sons, however, were in a small minority, and the 
generality of Mr. Tryan’s friends and _ hearers 
rather exulted in an opportunity of braving insult 
for the sake of a preacher to whom they were 
attached on personal as well as doctrinal grounds. 
Miss Pratt spoke of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, 
and observed that the present crisis afforded an 
occasion for emulating their heroism even in these 
degenerate times; while less highly instructed 
persons, whose memories were not well stored with 
precedents, simply expressed their determination, 


42 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


as Mr. Jerome had done, to “stan’ by” the 
preacher and his cause, believing it to be the 
“cause of God.” 

On Sunday evening, then, at a quarter-past S1X, 
Mr. Tryan, setting out from Mr. Landor’s with a 
party of his friends who had assembled there, was 
soon joined by two other groups from Mr. Pratt’s 
and Mr. Dunn’s; and stray persons on their way 
to church naturally falling into rank behind this 
leading file, by the time they reached the entrance 
of Orchard Street, Mr. Tryan’s friends formed 
a considerable procession, walking three or four 
abreast. It was in Orchard Street, and towards 
the church gates, that the chief crowd was col- 
lected; and at Mr. Dempster’s drawing-room 
window, on the upper floor, a more select assem- 
bly of Anti-Tryanites were gathered to witness the 
entertaining spectacle of the Tryanites walking to 
church amidst the jeers and hootings of the crowd. 

To prompt the popular wit with appropriate 
sobriquets, numerous copies of Mr. Dempster’s 
play-bill were posted on the walls, in suitably 
large and emphatic type. As it is possible that 
the most industrious collector of mural literature 
may not have been fortunate enough to possess 
himself of this production, which ought by all 
means to be preserved among the materials of our 
provincial religious history, I subjoin a faithful 
copy. 

GRAND ENTERTAINMENT!!! 
To be given at Milby on Sunday evening next, by the 
Famous Comepian, TRY-IT-ON ! 
And his first-rate Company, including not only an 


UNPARALLELED Cast FoR CoMEDbyY! 
But a Large Collection of reclarmed and converted Animuls ; 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 43 


Among the rest 
A Bear, who used to dance! 
A Parrot, once given to swearing ! ! 
A Polygamous Pig! ! ! 
and 
A Monkey who used to catch fleas on a Sunday!!! 1! 
Together with a 
Pair of regenerated LINNETS! 
With an entirely new song, and plumage. 


Mr. Try-IT-on 


Will first pass through the streets, in procession, with his un- 


rivalled Company, warranted to have their eyes turned up 
higher, and the corners of their mouths turned down lower, 
than any other company of Mountebanks in this circuit! 


AFTER WHICH 
The Theatre will be opened, and the entertainment will 
commence at HaLr-Past SIx, 
When will be presented 
A piece, never before performed on any stage, entitled 


THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING; 
or 
Toe MetTHopist IN A MASK. 

Mr. Boanerges Soft Sawder Mr. TRY-IT-ON. 
Old Ten-per-cent Godly... Mr. GANDER. 
repesdtemupels ss .8.-.'.-. . Mr. Tonto, 
Mr. Lime-Twig Lady-winner. . . Mr. TRY-IT-ON. 

Miss Piety-bait-the-hook . . . Miss Tonic. 

Angelica . é _ . ... Miss SERAPHINA TONIC. 


After which 
A miscellaneous Musical Interlude, commencing with 
The Lamentations of Jerom-ah ! 
In nasal recitative. 


To be followed by 
The favourite Cackling Quartette, 
by 
Two Hen-birds who are no chickens! 
The well-known counter-tenor, Mr. Done, and a Gander, 
lineally descended from the Goose that laid golden eggs ! 


44 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


To conclude with a 
Granp CHorws by the 
Entire Orchestra of Converted Animals ! ! 


But owing to the unavoidable absence (from illness) of the 


Bulldog, who has left off fighting, Mr. Tonic has kindly under- 
taken, at a moment’s notice, to supply the “bark !” 


The whole to conclude with a 
Screaming Farce of 
THER? PULEIT soNAL CHER: 


Mr. Saintly Smooth-Face . . . . Mr. Try-rr-on! 

Mr. Worming Sneaker . . . . - Mr. Try-rr-on!! 

Mr. All-grace No-works . . . + Mr. TRy-1T-ow! tol 
Mr. Elect-and-Chosen Apewell . . Mr. Try-1t-on!!!! 
Mr. Malevolent Prayerful . . . . Mr. Try-rt-on!1 11! 
Mr. Foist-himself-everywhere. . . Mr. Try-rt-on!!!!!! 
Mr. Flout-the-aged Upstart . . . Mr. TRy-rt-ontittt! 


Admission Free. A Collection will be made at the Doors. 
Vivat Rex! 


This satire, though it presents the keenest edge 
of Milby wit, does not strike you as lacerating, li 
imagine. But hatred is like fire, —it makes even 
light rubbish deadly. And Mr. Dempster’s sar- 
casms were not merely visible on the walls; they 
were reflected in the derisive glances, and audible 
in the jeering voices of the crowd. Through this 
pelting shower of nicknames and bad puns, with an 
ad libitum accompaniment of groans, howls, hisses, 
and hee-haws, but of no heavier missiles, Mr. 
Tryan walked pale and composed, giving his arm 
to old Mr. Landor, whose step was feeble. On the 
other side of him was Mr. Jerome, who still walked 
firmly, though his shoulders were slightly bowed. 

Outwardly Mr. Tryan was composed, but in- 
wardly he was suffering acutely from these tones 


JANEI’S REPENTANCH. 45 


of hatred and scorn. However strong his con- 
sciousness of right, he found it no stronger armour 
against such weapons as derisive glances and viru- 
lent words than against stones and clubs: his 
conscience was in repose, but his sensibility was 
bruised. 

Once more only did the Evangelical curate pass 
up Orchard Street followed by a train of friends ; 
once more only was there a crowd assembled to 
witness his entrance through the church gates. 
But that second time no voice was heard above a 
whisper, and the whispers were words of sorrow 
and blessing. That second time Janet Dempster 
was not looking on in scorn and merriment; her 
eyes were worn with grief and watching, and she 
was following her beloved friend and pastor to the 
grave. 


CHAPTER, X. 


History, we know, is apt to repeat herself, and to 
foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight 
change of costume. From the time of Xerxes 
downwards, we have seen generals playing the 
braggadocio at the outset of their campaigns, and 
conquering the enemy with the greatest ease in 
after-dinner speeches. But events are apt to be in 
disgusting discrepancy with the anticipations of 
the most ingenious tacticians; the difficulties of 
the expedition are ridiculously at variance with 
able calculations; the enemy has the impudence 
not to fall into confusion as had been reasonably 
expected of him; the mind of the gallant general 
begins to be distracted by news of intrigues against 
him at home, and, notwithstanding the handsome 
compliments he paid to Providence as his un- 
doubted patron before setting out, there seems 
every probability that the Ze Deums will be all on 
the other side. 

So it fell out with Mr. Dempster, in his memo- 
rable campaign against the Anti-Tryanites. After 
all the premature triumph of the return from 
Elmstoke, the battle of the Evening Lecture had 
been lost; the enemy was in possession of the 
field; and the utmost hope remaining was, that by 
a harassing guerilla warfare he might be driven to 
evacuate the country. 

For some time this sort of. warfare was kept up 
with considerable spirit. The shafts of Mulby 


JANES REPENTANCE. 47 


ridicule were made more formidable by being 
poisoned with calumny; and very ugly stories, 
narrated with circumstantial minuteness, were soon 
in circulation concerning Mr. Tryan and his hear- 
ers, from which stories it was plainly deducible 
that Evangelicalism led by a necessary consequence 
to hypocritical indulgence in vice. Some old 
friendships were broken asunder, and there were 
near relations who felt that religious differences, 
unmitigated by any prospect of a legacy, were a 
sufficient ground for exhibiting their family anti- 
pathy. Mr. Budd harangued his workmen, and 
threatened them with dismissal if they or their 
families were known to attend the evening lecture; 
and Mr. Tomlinson, on discovering that his fore- 
man was a rank Tryanite, blustered to a great 
extent, and would have cashiered that valuable 
functionary on the spot, if such a retributive pro- 
cedure had not been inconvenient. 

On the whole, however, at the end of a few 
months, the balance of substantial loss was on the 
side of the Anti-Tryanites. Mr. Pratt, indeed, 
had lost a patient or two besides Mr. Dempster’s 
family; but as it was evident that Evangelicalism 
had not dried up the stream of his anecdote, or in 
the least altered his view of any lady’s constitu- 
tion, it is probable that a change accompanied by 
so few outward and visible signs, was rather the 
pretext than the ground of his dismissal in those 
additional cases. Mr. Dunn was threatened with 
the loss of several good customers, Mrs. Phipps 
and Mrs. Lowme having set the example of order- 
ing him to send in his bill; and the draper began 
to look forward to his next stock-taking with an 
anxiety which was but slightly mitigated by the 


48 SCENES OF (CGERICAL GLEE, 


parallel his wife suggested between his own case 
and that of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, 
who were thrust into a burning fiery furnace. For, 
as he observed to her the next morning, with that 
perspicacity which belongs to the period of shav- 
ing, whereas their deliverance consisted in the fact 
that their linen and woollen goods were not con- 
sumed, his own deliverance lay in precisely the 
opposite result. But convenience, that admirable 
branch system from the main line of self-interest, 
makes us all fellow-helpers in spite of adverse 
resolutions. It is probable that no speculative or 
theological hatred would be ultimately strong 
enough to resist the persuasive power of conven- 
ience: that a latitudinarian baker, whose bread 
was honourably free from alum, would command 
the custom of any dyspeptic Puseyite; that an 
Arminian with the toothache would prefer a skil- 
ful Calvinistic dentist to a bungler stanch against 
the doctrines of Election and Final Perseverance, 
who would be likely to break the tooth in his 
head; and that a Plymouth Brother, who had a 
well-furnished grocery-shop in a favourable vici- 
nage, would occasionally have the pleasure of 
furnishing sugar or vinegar to orthodox families 
that found themselves unexpectedly “out of ” 
those indispensable commodities. In this persua- 
sive power of convenience lay Mr. Dunn’s ultimate 
security from martyrdom. His drapery was the 
best in Milby; the comfortable use and wont of 
procuring satisfactory articles at a moment’s notice 
proved too strong for Anti-Tryanite zeal; and the 
draper could soon look forward to his next stock- 
taking without the support of a Scriptural parallel. 
On the other hand, Mr. Dempster had lost his 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 49 


excellent client, Mr. Jerome, —a loss which galled 
him out of proportion to the mere monetary deficit 
it represented. The attorney loved money, but he 
loved power still better He had always been 
proud of having early won the confidence of a con- 
venticle-goer, and of being able to “ turn the prop 
of Salem round his thumb.” Like most other 
men, too, he had a certain kindness towards those 
who had employed him when he was only starting 
in life; and just as we do not like to part with an 
old weather-glass from our study, or a two-feet 
ruler that we have carried in our pocket ever since 
we began business, so Mr. Dempster did not like 
having to erase his old client’s name from the 
accustomed drawer in the bureau. Our habitual 
life is like a wall hung with pictures, which has 
been shone on by the suns of many years: take one 
of the pictures away, and it leaves a definite blank 
space, to which our eyes can never turn without 
a sensation of discomfort. Nay, the involuntary 
loss of any familiar object almost always brings a 
chill as from an evil omen; it seems to be the first 
finger-shadow of advancing death. 

From all these causes combined, Mr, Dempster 
could never think of his lost client without strong 
irritation, and the very sight of Mr. Jerome pass- 
ing in the street was wormwood to him. 

One day, when the old gentleman was coming 
up Orchard Street on his roan mare, shaking the 
bridle, and tickling her flank with the whip as 
usual, though there was a perfect mutual under- 
standing that she was not to quicken her pace, 
Janet happened to be on her own door-step, and 
he could not resist the temptation of stopping to 
speak to that “nice little woman,” as he always 
VOL. 11. —4 


50 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


called her, though she was taller than all the rest 
of his feminine acquaintances. Janet, in spite of 
her disposition to take her husband’s part in all 
public matters, could bear no malice against her 
old friend; so they shook hands. 

“Well, Mrs. Dempster, I’m sorry to my heart 
not to see you sometimes, that I am,” said Mr. 
Jerome, in a plaintive tone. “But if you’ve got 
any poor people as wants help, and you know’s 
deservin’, send ’em to me, send ’em to me, just 
the same.” . 

“Thank you, Mr. Jerome, that I will. Good- 
byes 

Janet made the interview as short as she could, 
but it was not short enough to escape the observa- 
tion of her husband, who, as she feared, was on 
his mid-day return from his office at the other end 
of the street; and this offence of hers, in speaking 
to Mr. Jerome, was the frequently recurring theme 
of Mr. Dempster’s objurgatory domestic eloquence. 

Associating the loss of his old client with Mr. 
Tryan’s influence, Dempster began to know more 
distinctly why he hated the obnoxious curate. 
But a passionate hate, as well as a passionate love, 
demands some leisure and mental freedom. Perse- 
cution and revenge, like courtship and toadyism, 
will not prosper without a considerable expendi- 
ture of time and ingenuity; and these are not to 
spare with a man whose law-business and liver are 
both beginning to show unpleasant symptoms. 
Such was the disagreeable turn affairs were taking 
with Mr. Dempster; and, like the general dis- 
tracted by home intrigues, he was too much 
harassed himself to lay ingenious plans for harass- 
ing the enemy. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 51 


Meanwhile the evening lecture drew larger and 
larger congregations ; not perhaps attracting many 
from that select aristocratic circle in which the 
Lowmes and Pittmans were predominant, but win- 
ning the larger proportion of Mr Crewe’s morning 
and afternoon hearers, and thinning Mr. Stickney’s 
evening audiences at Salem. Evangelicalism was 
making its way in Milby, and gradually diffusing 
its subtle odour into chambers that were bolted and 
barred against it. The movement, like all other 
religious “revivals,” had a mixed effect. Reli- 
gious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once 
set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of 
instruments, some of them wofully coarse, feeble, 
or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying 
out that the melody itself is detestable. It may 
be that some of Mr. Tryan’s hearers had gained a 
religious vocabulary rather than religious experi- 
ence; that here and there a weaver’s wife who 
afew months before had been simply a silly slat- 
tern, was converted into that more complex nui- 
sance, a silly and sanctimonious slattern ; that the 
old Adam, with the pertinacity of middle age, 
continued to tell fibs behind the counter, notwith- 
standing the new Adam’s addiction to Bible-reading 
and family prayer; that the children in the Paddi- 
ford Sunday-school had their memories crammed 
with phrases about the blood of cleansing, imputed 
righteousness, and justification by faith alone, 
which an experience lying principally in chuck- 
farthing, hop-scotch, parental slappings, and long- 
ings after unattainable lollypop, served rather to 
darken than to illustrate; and that at Milby in 
those distant days, as in all other times and places 
where the mental atmosphere is changing, and 


52 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


men are inhaling the stimulus of new ideas, folly 
often mistook itself for wisdom, ignorance gave 
itself airs of knowledge, and selfishness, turning 
its eyes upward, called itself religion. 
Nevertheless, Evangelicalism had brought into 
palpable existence and operation in Milby society 
that idea of duty, that recognition of something to 
be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, 
which is to the moral life what the addition of a 
great central ganglion is to animal hfe. No man 
can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea 
without rising to a higher order of experience: 
a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has 
been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a 
mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses. 
Whatever might be the weaknesses of the ladies 
who pruned the luxuriance of their lace and rib- 
bons, cut out garments for the poor, distributed 
tracts, quoted Scripture, and defined the true Gos- 
pel, they had learned this, —that there was a 
divine work to be done in life, a rule of goodness 
higher than the opinion of their neighbours; and 
if the notion of a heaven in reserve for themselves 
was a little too prominent, yet the theory of fitness 
for that heaven consisted in purity of heart, in 
Christ-like compassion, in the subduing of selfish 
desires. They might give the name of piety to 
much that was only puritanic egoism; they might 
call many things sin that were not sin; but they 
had at least the feeling that sin was to be avoided 
and resisted, and colour-blindness, which may mis- 
take drab for scarlet, is better than total blinduess, 
which sees no distinction of colour at all. Miss 
Rebecca Linnet, in quiet attire, with a somewhat 
excessive solemnity of countenance, teaching at 


JANETS REPENTANCE. 53 


the Sunday-school, visiting the poor, and striving 
after a standard of purity and goodness, had surely 
more moral loveliness than in those flaunting 
peony-days, when she had no other model than the 
costumes of the heroines in the circulating library. 
Miss Eliza Pratt, listening in rapt attention to 
Mr. Tryan’s evening lecture, no doubt found evan- 
gelical channels for vanity and egoism; but she 
was clearly in moral advance of Miss Phipps gig- 
gling under her feathers at old Mr, Crewe’s pecu- 
liarities of enunciation. And even elderly fathers 
and mothers, with minds, like Mrs. Linnet’s, too 
tough to imbibe much doctrine, were the better 
for having their hearts inclined towards the new 
preacher as a messenger from God. They became 
ashamed, perhaps, of their evil tempers, ashamed 
of their worldliness, ashamed of their trivial, 
futile past. The first condition of human goodness 
is something to love; the second, something to rev- 
erence; and this latter precious gift was brought 
to Milby by Mr. Tryan and Evangelicalism. 
Yes, the movement was good, though it had that 
mixture of folly and evil which often makes what 
is good an offence to feeble and fastidious minds, 
who want human actions and characters riddled 
through the sieve of their own ideas, before they 
can accord their sympathy or admiration. Such 
minds, I dare say, would have found Mr. Tryan’s 
character very much in need of that riddling pro- 
cess. The blessed work of helping the world 
forward, happily does not wait to be done by per- 
fect men; and I should imagine that neither Luther 
_ nor John Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied 
the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes 
nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what 


54 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


is exalted, and does nothing but what is graceful. 
The real heroes of God’s making are quite differ- 
ent: they have their natural heritage of love and 
conscience which they drew in with their mother’s 
milk; they know one or two of those deep spirit- 
ual truths which are only to be won by long wrest- 
ling with their own sins and their own sorrows; 
they have earned faith and strength so far as they 
have done genuine work; but the rest is dry barren 
theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay. Their 
insight is blended with mere opinion; their sym- 
pathy is perhaps confined in narrow conduits of 
doctrine, instead of flowing forth with the freedom 
of a stream that blesses every weed in its course ; 
obstinacy or self-assertion will often interfuse 1t- 
self with their grandest impulses; and their very 
deeds. of self-sacrifice are sometimes only the 
rebound of a passionate egoism. So it was with 
Mr. Tryan; and any one looking at him with the 
bird’s-eye glance of a critic might perhaps say that 
he made the mistake of identifying Christianity 
with a too narrow doctrinal system; that he saw 
God’s work too exclusively in antagonism to the 
world, the flesh, and the devil; that his intellec- 
tual culture was too limited —and so on; making 
Mr. Tryan the text for a wise discourse on the 
characteristics of the Evangelical school in his 
day. 

But I am not poised at that lofty height. J am 
on the level and in the press with him, as he 
struggles his way along the stony road, through 
the crowd of unloving fellow-men. He is stum- 
bling, perhaps; his heart now beats fast with dread, 
now heavily with anguish; his eyes are sometimes 
dim with tears, which he makes haste to dash 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 55 


away; he pushes manfully on, with fluctuating 
faith and courage, with a sensitive failing body ; 
at last he falls, the struggle is ended, and the 
crowd closes over the space he has left. 

“One of the Evangelical clergy, a disciple of 
Venn,” says the critic from his bird’s-eye station. 
“Not a remarkable specimen; the anatomy and 
habits of his species have been determined long 
ago. ” 

Yet surely, surely the only true knowledge of 
our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel 
with him,— which gives us a fine ear for the heart- 
pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of 
circumstance and opinion, Our subtlest analysis 
of schools and sects must miss the essential truth, 
unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all 
forms of human thought and work the life and 
death struggles of separate human beings. 


CHAPTER XL 


Mr. TRYAN’S most unfriendly observers were 
obliged to admit that he gave himself no rest. 
Three sermons on Sunday, a night-school for young 
men on Tuesday, a cottage-lecture on Thursday, 
addresses to school-teachers, and catechising of 
school-children, with pastoral visits, multiplying 
as his influence extended beyond his own district 
of Paddiford Common, would have been enough to 
tax severely the powers of a much stronger man. 
Mr. Pratt remonstrated with him on his impru- 
dence, but could not prevail on him so far to 
economize time and strength as to keep a horse. 
On some ground or other, which his friends found 
difficult to explain to themselves, Mr Tryan 
seemed bent on wearing himself out. His enemies 
were at no loss to account for such a course. The 
Evangelical curate’s selfishness was clearly of too 
bad a kind to exhibit itself after the ordinary 
manner of a sound, respectable selfishness. “ He 
wants to get the reputation of a saint,” said one; 
“He’s eaten up with spiritual pride,” said an- 
other; “He’s got his eye on some fine living, and 
wants to creep up the Bishop’s sleeve,” said a 
third. 

Mr. Stickney, of Salem, who considered all 
voluntary discomfort’ as a remnant of the legal 
spirit, pronounced a severe condemnation on this 
self-neglect, and expressed his fear that Mr. Tryan 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 54 


was still far from having attained true Christian 
liberty. Good Mr. Jerome eagerly seized this doc- 
trinal view of the subject as a means of enforcing 
the suggestions of his own benevolence; and one 
cloudy afternoon, in the end of November, he 
mounted his roan mare with the determination of 
riding to Paddiford and “ arguying ” the point with 
Mr. Tryan. 

The old gentleman’s face looked very mournful 
as he rode along the dismal Paddiford lanes, be- 
tween rows of grimy houses, darkened with hand- 
looms, while the black dust was whirled about 
him by the cold November wind. He was think- 
ing of the object which had brought him on this 
afternoon ride; and his thoughts, according to his 
habit when alone, found vent every now and then 
in audible speech. It seemed to him, as his eyes 
rested on this scene of Mr. Tryan’s labours, that 
he could understand the clergyman’s self-priva- 
tion without resorting to Mr. Stickney’s theory of 
defective spiritual enlightenment. Do not philo- 
sophic doctors tell us that we are unable to dis- 
cern so much as a tree, except by an unconscious 
cunning which combines many past and separate 
sensations; that no one sense is independent of 
another, so that in the dark we can hardly taste a 
fricassee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not, 
and the most intelligent boy, if accommodated 
with claws or hoofs instead of fingers, would be 
likely to remain on the lowest form? If so, it is 
easy to understand that our discernment of men’s 
motives must depend on the completeness of the 
elements we can bring from our own susceptibility 
and our own experience. See to it, friend, before 
you pronounce a too hasty judgment, that your 


58 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


own moral sensibilities are not of a hoofed or 
clawed character. The keenest eye will not serve, 
unless you have the delicate fingers, with their 
subtle nerve filaments, which elude scientific len- 
ses, and lose themselves in the invisible world ot 
human sensations. 

As for Mr. Jerome, he drew the elements of his 
moral vision from the depths of his veneration and 
pity. If he himself felt so much for these poor 
things to whom life was so dim and meagre, what 
must the clergyman feel who had undertaken be- 
fore God to be their shepherd ? 

“Ah!” he whispered interruptedly, “it’s too 
big a load for his conscience, poor man! He wants 
to mek himself their brother, like; can’t abide to 
preach to the fastin’ on a full stomach. Ah! he’s 
better nor we are, that s it, —he’s a deal better 
nor we are ” 

Here Mr. Jerome shook his bridle violently, and 
looked up with an air of moral courage, as if 
Mr. Stickney had been present, and liable to take 
offence at this conclusion. A few minutes more 
brought him in front of Mrs. Wagstaft’s, where 
Mr Tryan lodged. He had often been here before, 
so that the contrast between this ugly square brick 
house. with its shabby bit of grass-plot, stared at 
all round by cottage windows, and his own pretty 
white home, set in a paradise of orchard and gar- 
den and pasture, was not new to him; but he felt 
it with fresh force to-day, as he slowly fastened 
his roan by the bridle to the wooden paling, and 
knocked at the door. Mr. Tryan was at home, 
and sent to request that Mr. Jerome would walk 
up into his study, as the fire was out in the parlour 
below. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 59 


At the mention of a clergyman’s study, perhaps, 
your too active imagination conjures up a perfect 
snuggery, where the general air of comfort 1s res- 
cued from a secular character by strong ecclesias- 
tical suggestions in the shape of the furniture, the 
pattern of the carpet, and the prints on the wall; 
where, if a nap is taken, it is in an easy-chair 
with a Gothic back, and the very feet rest on a 
warm and velvety simulation of church windows; 
where the pure art of rigorous English Protestan- 
tism smiles above the mantelpiece in the portrait 
of an eminent bishop, or a refined Anglican taste 
is indicated by a German print from Overbeck; 
where the walls are lined with choice divinity in 
sombre binding, and the light is softened by a 
screen of boughs with a gray church in the back- 
eround. 

But I must beg you to dismiss all such scenic 
prettiness, suitable as they may be to a clergy- 
mans character and complexion; for I have to 
confess that Mr Tryan’s study was a very ugly 
little room indeed, with an ugly slap-dash pattern 
on the walls, an ugly carpet on the floor, and an 
ugly view of cottage roofs and cabbage-gardens 
from the window. His own person, his writing- 
table, and his bookcase were the only objects in 
the room that had the slightest air of refinement ; 
and the sole provision for comfort was a clumsy 
straight-backed arm-chair, covered with faded 
chintz. The man who could live in such a room, 
unconstrained by poverty, must either have his 
vision fed from within by an intense passion, or 
he must have chosen that least attractive form of 
self mortification which wears no haircloth and has 
no meagre days, but accepts the vulgar, the com- 


60 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


monplace, and the ugly, whenever the highest 
duty seems to le among. them. 

“Mr. Tryan, I hope you’ll excuse me disturbin’ 
on you,” said Mr. Jerome; “but I’d summat par- 
tickler to say.” ; 

“You don’t disturb me at all, Mr. Jerome; I’m 
very glad to have a visit from you,” said Mr. Tryan, 
shaking him heartily by the hand, and offering him 
the chintz-covered “easy ”-chair; “it is some time 
since I’ve had an opportunity of seeing you, except 
on a Sunday.” 

“Ah, sir! your time’s so taken up, I’m well 
aware o’ that; it’s not only what you hev to do, 
but it’s goin’ about from place to place; an’ you 
don’t keep a hoss, Mr. Tryan. You don’t take care 
enough o yourself, — you don’t indeed, an’ that’s 
what I come to talk to y’ about.” 

“That’s very good of you, Mr Jerome; but I 
assure you I think walking does me no harm. It 
is rather a relief to me after speaking or writing. 
You know I have no great circuit to make. The 
farthest distance I have to walk is to Milby Church, 
and if ever I want a horse on a Sunday, | hire 
tadley’s, who lives not many hundred yards from 
mes 

“Well, but now! the winter’s comin’ on, an’ 
you'll get wet i’ your feet, an’ Pratt tells me as 
your constitution ’s dillicate, as anybody may see, 
for the matter o’ that, wiout bein’ a doctor. An’ 
this is the light I look at it in, Mr Tryan: who’s 
to fill up your place, if you was to be disabled, as 
I may say? Consider what a valyable life yours 
is You’ve begun a great work 1 Milby, and so 
you might carry it on, if you’d your health and 
strength. The more care you take o’ yourself, the 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 61 


longer you'll live, belike, God willing, to do good 
to your fellow-creaturs.” 

«Why, my dear Mr. Jerome, I think I should 
not be a long-lived man in any case; and if I were 
to take care of myself under the pretext of doing 
more good, I should very likely die and leave 
nothing done after all” 

“Well! but keepin’ a hoss wouldn’t hinder you 
from workin? It’ud help you to do more, though 
Pratt says as it’s usin’ your voice so constant as 
does you the most harm. Now, isn’t it —I’m no 
scholard, Mr. Tryan, an’ I’m not a-goin’ to dictate 
to you — but isn’t it a’most a-killin’ o’ yourself, to 
go on a’ that way beyond your strength? We 
must n’t fling our lives away.” 

“No, not fling them away lightly, but we are per- 
mitted to lay down our lives inaright cause. There 
are many duties, as you know, Mr. Jerome, which 
stand before taking care of our own lives.” 

“Ah! I can’t arguy wi’ you, Mr. Tryan; but what 
I wanted to say’s this: There’s my little chacenut 
hoss; I should take it quite a kindness if you ’d hev 
him through the winter an’ ride him. I’ve thought 
o’ sellin’ him a many times, for Mrs. Jerome can’t 
abide him ; and what do I want wi’ twonags? But 
I’m fondo’ the little chacenut, an’ I shouldn't like to 
sell him. So if you’ll only ride him for me, you’ll 
do me a kindness, — you will, indeed Mr. Tryan.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Jerome. I promise you to ask 
for him, when I feel that I want anag. ‘There is 
no man I would more gladly be indebted to than 
you: but at present I would rather not have a horse. 
I should ride him very little, and it would be an 
inconvenience to me to keep him rather than 
otherwise.” 


62 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


Mr. Jerome looked troubled and hesitating, as if 
he had something on his mind that would not 
readily shape itself into words. At last he said: 
“You'll excuse me, Mr Tryan, I would n’t be takin’ 
a liberty, but I know what great claims you hev on 
you as a clergyman. Is it the expense, Mr Tryan ? 
is it the money ?” 

“No, my dear sir. I have much more than a 
single man needs. My way of living is quite of 
my own choosing, and I am doing nothing but 
what I feel bound to do, quite apart from money 
considerations. We cannot judge for one another, 
you know; we have each our peculiar weaknesses and 
temptations. I quite admit that it might be right 
for another man to allow himself more luxuries, 
and I assure you I think it no superiority in myself 
to do without them. On the contrary, if my heart 
were less rebellious, and if I were less liable to 
temptation, I should not need that sort of self- 
denial. But,” added Mr. Tryan, holding out his 
hand to Mr. Jerome, “ I understand your kindness, 
and bless you for it. If I want a horse. I shall ask 
for the chestnut.” 

Mr. Jerome was obliged to rest contented with this 
promise, and rode home sorrowfully, reproaching 
himself with not having said one thing he meant 
to say when setting out, and with having “clean 
forgot ” the arguments he had intended to quote 
from Mr. Stickney. 

Mr. Jerome’s was not the only mind that was 
seriously disturbed by the idea that the curate was 
overworking himself. There were tender women’s 
hearts in which anxiety about the state of his 
affections was beginning to be merged in anxiety 
about the state of his health. Miss Eliza Pratt had 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. eis: 


at one time passed through much sleepless cogita- 
tion on the possibility of Mr. Tryan’s being attached 
to some lady at a distance, —at Laxeter, perhaps, 
where he had formerly held a curacy; and her fine 
eyes kept close watch lest any symptom of engaged 
affections on his part should escape her. It seemed 
an alarming fact that his handkerchiefs were beauti- 
fully marked with hair, until she reflected that he 
had an unmarried sister of whom he spoke with 
much affection as his father’s companion and com- 
forter, Besides, Mr. Tryan had never paid any 
distant visit, except one for a few days to his father, 
and no hint escaped him of his intending to take a 
house, or change his mode of living No! he could 
not be engaged, though he might have been disap- 
pointed. But this latter misfortune is one from 
which a devoted clergyman has been known to 
recover. by the aid of a fine pair of gray eyes that 
beam on him with affectionate reverence. Before 
Christmas, however, her cogitations began. to take 
another turn. She heard her father say very confi- 
dently that “Tryan was consumptive, and ii he 
didnt take more care of himself, his life would not 
be worth a year’s purchase ;” and shame at having 
speculated on suppositions that were likely to prove 
so false sent poor Miss Eliza’s feelings with all the 
stronger impetus into the one channel of sorrowful 
alarm at the prospect of losing the pastor who had 
opened to her a new life of piety and self-subjection. 
It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the 
thought of a man’s death hallows him anew to us; as 
if life were not sacred too, — as if it were compara- 
tively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to 
the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome 
steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were 
due to the one who is spared that hard journey. 


64 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


The Miss Linnets, too, were beginning to take a 
new view of the future, entirely uncoloured by jeal- 
ousy of Miss Eliza Pratt. 

“Did you notice,” said Mary, one afternoon when 
Mrs Pettifer was taking tea with them — “ did you 
notice that short dry cough of Mr Tryan’s yester- 
day? I think he looks worse and worse every 
week, and I only wish I knew his sister; I would 
write to her about him. I’m sure something should 
be done to make him give up part of his work, and 
he will listen to no one here.” 

« Ah,” said Mrs. Pettifer, “it’s a thousand pities 
his father and sister can’t come and live with him, 
if he isn’t to marry. But I wish with all my heart 
he could have taken tosome nice woman as would 
have made a comfortable home for him. I used to 
think he might take to Eliza Pratt; she’s a good 
girl, and very pretty ; but I see no likelihood of 1t 
now.” 

“ No, indeed,” said Rebecca, with some emphasis ; 
“Mr. Tryan’s heart is not for any woman to win; 
it is all given to his work; and I could never wish 
to see him with a young inexperienced wife who 
would be a drag on him instead of a helpmate.” 

“He’d need have somebody, young or old,” 
observed Mrs. Linnet, “to see as he wears a flannel 
wescoat, an’ changes his stockins when he comes 
in. It’s my opinion he’s got that cough wiv sittin’ 
i’ wet shoes and stockins; an’ that Mrs. Wagstaff’s 
a poor addle-headed thing; she doesn’t half tek 
care on him.” 

“Oh, mother!” said Rebecca, “she’s a very pious 
woman. And I’m sure she thinks it too great a 
privilege to have Mr. Tryan with her, not to do the 
best she can to make him comfortable. She can’t 
help her rooms being shabby.” 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 65 


“T've nothing to say again’ her piety, my dear; 
but I know very well I should n’t like her to cook 
my victual. When a man comes in hungry an 
tired, piety won't feed him, I reckon Hard 
carrots ‘ull lie heavy on his stomach, plety or no 
piety. I called in one day when she was dishin’ 
up Mr. Tryan’s dinner, an’ I could see the pota- 
toes was as watery as watery. It’s right enough 
to be speritial, — I’m no enemy to that, but I lke 
my potatoes mealy. I don’t see as anybody ’ull go 
to heaven the sooner for not digestin’ their dinner, — 
providin’ they don’t die sconer, as, mayhap, Mr. 
Tryan will, poor dear man!” 

“It will bea heavy day for us all when that comes 
to pass,” said Mrs. Pettifer. “We shall never get 
anybody to fill up that gap. ‘There’s the new 
clergyman that’s just come to Shepperton, — Mr 
Parry ; I saw him the other day at Mrs. Bond's. He 
may be a very good man, and a fine preacher; they 
say he is; but I thought to myself, What a differ- 
ence between him and Mr. Tryan! He’s a sharp- 
sort-of looking man, and has n’t that feeling way with 
him that Mr. Tryan has. What is so wonderful to 
me in Mr. Tryan is the way he puts himself on a 
level with one, and talks to one like a brother. I’m 
never afraid of telling him anything. He never 
seems to look down on anybody. He knows how 
to lift up those that are cast down, if ever man 
did.” 

“Yes,” said Mary. “And when I see all the 
faces turned up to him in Paddiford Church, I often 
think how hard it would be for any clergyman who 
had to come after him; he has made the people 
love him so.” 

VOL. 11.—5 


CHAPTER XIL 


In her occasional visits to her near neighbour Mrs. 
Pettifer, too old a friend to be shunned because she 
was a Tryanite, Janet was obliged sometimes to 
hear allusions to Mr. Tryan, and even to listen to 
his praises, which she usually met with playful 
incredulity 

“Ah, well,” she answered one day, “I like dear 
old Mr. Crewe and his pipes a great deal better than 
your Mr. Tryan and his Gospel. When I was a little 
toddle, Mr. and Mrs. Crewe used to let me play 
about in their garden, and have a swing between 
the great elm-trees, because mother had no garden. 
I like people who are kind; kindness is my religion ; 
and that’s the reason I hke you, dear Mrs. Pettifer, 
though you are a Tryanite.” 

“But that’s Mr. Tryan’s religion too,— at least 
partly. There’s nobody can give himself up more 
to doing good amongst the poor; and he thinks of 
their bodies too, as well as their souls.” 

“Oh, yes, yes; but then he talks about faith, and 
erace, and all that, making people believe they are 
better than others, and that God loves them more 
than He does the rest of the world. I know he has 
put a great deal of that into Sally Martin’s head, 
and it has done her no good at all. She was as 
nice, honest, patient a girl as need be before; and 
now she fancies she has new light and new wisdom. 
I don’t like those notions.” 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 67 


“You mistake him, indeed you do, my dear Mrs. 
Dempster; I wish you’d go and hear him preach.” 

“Hear him preach! Why, you wicked woman, 
you would persuade me to disobey my husband, 
would you? Oh, shocking! I shall run away from 
you. Good-by.” 

A few days after this conversation, however, 
Janet went to Sally Martin’s about three oclock in 
the afternoon. The pudding that had been sent in 
for herself and “Mammy” struck her as just the 
sort of delicate morsel the poor consumptive girl 
would be likely to fancy, and in her usual impul- 
sive way she had started up from the dinner-table 
at once, put on her bonnet, and set off with a cov- 
ered plateful to the neighbouring street. When she 
entered the house there was no one to be seen ; 
but in the little side-room where Sally lay, Janet 
heard a voice. It was one she had not heard before, 
but she immediately guessed it to be Mr Tryan’s. 
. Her first impulse was to set down her plate and go 
away ; but Mrs. Martin might not be in, and then 
there would be no one to give Sally that delicious 
bit of pudding. So she stood still, and was obliged 
to hear what Mr. Tryan was saying. He was inter- 
rupted by one of the invalid’s violent fits of coughing. 

“Tt is very hard to bear, is it not ?”” he said, when 
she was still again. “Yet God seems to support 
you under it wonderfully. Pray for me, Sally, that 
I may have strength too when the hour of ereat 
suffering comes. It is one of my worst weaknesses 
to shrink from bodily pain, and I think the time is 
perhaps not far off when I shall have to bear what 
you are bearing. But now I have tired you. We 
have talked enough. Good-by.” 

Janet was surprised, and forgot her wish not to 


68 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


encounter Mr, Tryan; the tone and the words were 
so unlike what she had expected to hear. There 
was none of the self-satisfied unction of the teacher, 
quoting or exhorting or expounding, for the benefit of 
the hearer, but a simple appeal for help, a confession 
of weakness. Mr. Tryan had his deeply felt troubles 
then? Mr. Tryan, too, like herself, knew what it 
was to tremble at a foreseen trial,— to shudder at 
an impending burden heavier than he felt able to 
bear ? 

The most brilliant deed of virtue could not have 
inclined Janet’s good-will towards Mr. Tryan so 
much as this fellowship in suffering ; and the soften- 
ing thought was in her eyes when he appeared in 
the doorway, pale, weary, and depressed. ‘The sight 
of Janet standing there with the entire absence of 
self-consciousness which belongs to a new and vivid 
impression, made him start and pausea little. Their 
eyes met, and they looked at each other gravely for 
afew moments. Then they bowed, and Mr. Tryan 
passed out. 

There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere 
and loving human soul which will do more to dis- 
sipate prejudice and kindle charity than the most 
elaborate arguments. The fullest exposition of Mr. 
Tryan’s doctrine might not have sufficed to convince 
Janet that he had not an odious self-complacency 
in believing himself a peculiar child of God; but 
one direct, pathetic look of his had associated him 
with that conception forever. 

This happened late in the autumn, not long before 
Sally Martin died. Janet mentioned her new impres- 
sion to no one, for she was afraid of arriving at a 
still more complete contradiction of her former ideas. 
We have all of us considerable regard for our past 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 69 


self, and are not fond of casting reflections on that 
respected individual by a total negation of his opin- 
ions. Janet could no longer think of Mr. Tryan 
without sympathy, but she still shrank from the idea 
of becoming his hearer and admirer. That was a 
reversal of the past which was as little accordant 
with her inclination as her circumstances. 

And indeed this interview with Mr, Tryan was 
soon thrust into the background of poor Janet's 
memory by the daily thickening miseries of her 
life. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


THE loss of Mr. Jerome as a client proved only the 
beginning of annoyances to Dempster. That old 
gentleman had in him the vigorous remnant of an 
energy and perseverance which had created his own 
fortune ; and being, as [ have hinted, given to chew- 
ing the cud of a righteous indignation with con- 
siderable relish, he was determined to carry on his 
retributive war against the persecuting attorney. 
Having some influence with Mr. Pryme, who was one 
of the most substantial rate-payers in the neigh- 
bouring parish of Dingley, and who had himself 
a complex and long-standing private account with 
Dempster, Mr. Jerome stirred up this gentleman 
to an investigation of some suspicious points in the 
attorney’s conduct of the parish affairs. The natu- 
ral consequence was a personal quarrel between 
Dempster and Mr. Pryme; the client demanded 
his account, and then followed the old story of an 
exorbitant lawyer's bill, with the unpleasant anti- 
climax of taxing. 

These disagreeables, extending over many months, 
ran along side by side with the pressing business 
of Mr. Armstrong’s lawsuit, which was threatening 
to take.a turn rather depreciatory of Dempster’s 
professional prevision ; and it is not surprising that, 
being thus kept in a constant state of irritated excite- 
ment about his own affairs, he had little time for 
the further exhibition of his public spirit, or for 


JANETS REPENTANCE. ra 


rallying the forlorn hope of sound churchmanship 
against cant and hypocrisy. Not a few persons 
who had a grudge against him began to remark, 
with satisfaction, that “ Dempster’s luck was for- 
sakine him ;”’ particularly Mrs. Linnet, who thought 
she saw distinctly the gradual ripening of a provi- 
dential scheme whereby a just retribution would 
be wrought on the man who had deprived her of 
Pye’s Croft. On the other hand, Dempster’s well- 
satisfied clients, who were of opinion that the 
punishment of his wickedness might conveniently 
be deferred to another world, noticed with some 
concern that he was drinking more than ever, and 
that both his temper and his driving were becoming 
more furious. Unhappily those additional glasses of 
brandy, that exasperation of loud-tongued abuse, had 
other effects than any that entered into the con- 
templation of anxious clients: they were the little 
superadded symbols that were perpetually raising 
the sum of home misery. 

Poor Janet! how heavily the months rolled on 
for her, laden with fresh sorrows as the summer 
passed into autumn, the autumn into winter, and 
the winter into spring again! Every feverish morn- 
ing, with its blank listlessness and despair, seemed 
more hateful than the last; every coming night 
more impossible to brave without arming herself in 
leaden stupour. The morning light brought no olad- 
ness to her: it seemed only to throw its glare on 
what had happened in the dim candlelight, — on 
the cruel man seated immovable in drunken obsti- 
nacy by the dead fire and dying lights in the dining- 
room, rating her in harsh tones, reiterating old 
reproaches, — or on a hideous blank of something 
unremembered. something that must have made 


72 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


that dark bruise on her shoulder, which ached as 
she dressed herself. 

Do you wonder how it was that things had come 
to this pass, — what offence Janet had committed 
in the early years of marriage to rouse the brutal 
hatred of this man? The seeds of things are very 
small: the hours that le between sunrise and the 
vloom of midnight are travelled through by tiniest 
markings of the clock; and Janet, looking back 
along the fifteen years of her married life, hardly 
knew how or where this total misery began; hardly 
knew when the sweet wedded Jove and hope that 
had set forever had ceased to make a twilight of 
memory and relenting, before the oncoming of the 
utter dark. 

Old Mrs. Dempster thought she saw Se true 
beginning of it all in Janet’s want of housekeeping 
skill and exactness. “Janet,’ she said to herself, 
“was always running about doing things for other 
people, and neglecting her own house. That pro- 
vokes a man: what use is it for a woman to be 
loving, and making a fuss with her husband, if she 
does n’t take care and keep his home just as he hkes 
it; if she isn’t at hand when he wants anything 
done; if she doesn’t attend to all his wishes, let 
them be as small as they may? That was what I 
(ad when I was a wife, though I didn’t make half 
so much fuss about loving my husband. Then, 
Janet had no children.” ... Ah! there Mammy 
Dempster had touched a true spring, not perhaps of 
her son’s cruelty, but of half Janet’s misery. If she 
had had babes to rock to sleep, —lttle ones to 
kneel in their nightdress and say their prayers at 
her knees, — sweet boys and girls to put their young 
arms round her neck and kiss away her tears, — her 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 73 


poor hungry heart would have been fed with strong 
love, and might never have needed that fiery poison 
to still its cravings. Mighty is the force of mother- 
hood! says the great tragic poet to us across the 
ages, finding, as usual, the simplest words for the 
sublimest fact, — decvov TO Tiktew eotiv. It trans- 
forms all things by its vital heat; it turns timidity 
into fierce courage, and dreadless defiance into tremu- 
lous submission ; it turns thoughtlessness into fore- 
sight, and yet stills all anxiety into calm content; it 
makes selfishness become self-denial, and gives even 
to hard vanity the glance of admiring love. Yes; 
if Janet had been a mother, she might have been 
saved from much sin, and therefore from much of 
her sorrow. 

But do not believe that it was anything either 
present or wanting in poor Janet that formed the 
motive of her husband’s cruelty. Cruelty, like every 
other vice, requires no motive outside itself,— it only 
requires opportunity. You do not suppose Demp- 
ster had any motive for drinking beyond the craving 
for drink; the presence of brandy was the only 
necessary condition. And an unloving, tyrannous, 
brutal man needs no motive to prompt his cruelty ; 
he needs only the perpetual presence of a woman 
he can call his own. A whole park full of tame or 
timid-eyed animals to torment at his will would 
not serve him so well to glut his lust of torture ; 
they could not feel as one woman does; they could 
not throw out the keen retort which whets the edge 
of hatred. 

Janet’s bitterness would overflow in ready words ; 
she was not to be made meek by cruelty ; she would 
repent of nothing in the face of injustice, though 
she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look 


74 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


that recalled the old days of fondness; and in times 
of comparative calm would often recover her sweet 
woman’s habit of caressing playful affection. But 
such days were become rare, and poor Janet’s soul 
was kept like a vexed sea, tossed by a new storm 
before the old waves have fallen. Proud, angry 
resistance and sullen endurance were now almost 
the only alternations she knew. She would bear it 
all proudly to the world, but proudly towards him 
too; her woman’s weakness might shriek a cry for 
pity under a heavy blow, but voluntarily she would 
do nothing to mollify him, unless he first relented. 
What had she ever done to him but love him too 
well, — but believe in him too foolishly? He had 
no pity on her tender flesh ; he could strike the soft 
neck he had once asked to kiss. Yet she would 
not admit her wretchedness; she had married him 
blindly, and she would bear it out to the terrible 
end, whatever that might be. Better this misery 
than the blank that lay for her outside her married 
home. 

But there was one person who heard all the plaints 
and all the outbursts of bitterness and despair which 
Janet was never tempted to pour into any other 
ear; and alas! in her worst moments Janet would 
throw out wild reproaches against that patient ls- 
tener. For the wrong that rouses our angry pas- 
sions finds only a medium in us; it passes through 
us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have 
suffered. 

Mrs. Raynor saw too clearly all through the 
winter that things were getting worse in Orchard 
Street. She had evidence enough of it in Janet's 
visits to her; and though her own visits to her 
daughter were so timed that she saw little of Demp- 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 75 


ster personally, she noticed many indications not 
only that he was drinking to greater excess, but 
that he was beginning to lose that physical power 
of supporting excess which had long been the ad- 
miration of such fine spirits as Mr. Tomlinson. It 
seemed as if Dempster had some consciousness of 
this, —some new distrust of himself; for, before 
Winter was over, it was observed that he had re- 
nounced his habit of driving out alone, and was 
never seen in his gig without a servant by his side. 

Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, 
like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is 
not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left 
arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is 
invisible, but the victim totters under the dire 
clutch. 

The various symptoms that things were getting 
worse with the Dempsters afforded Milby gossip 
something new to say on an old subject. Mrs. 
Dempster, every one remarked, looked more miser- 
able than ever, though she kept up the old pretence 
of being happy and satisfied. She was scarcely ever 
seen, as she used to be, going about on her good- 
natured errands; and even old Mrs. Crewe, who had 
always been wilfully blind to anything wrong In 
her favourite Janet, was obliged to admit that she 
had not seemed like herself lately. “The poor 
thing ’s out of health,” said the kind little old lady, 
in answer to all gossip about Janet; “her headaches 
always were bad, and I know what headaches are ; 
why, they make one quite delirious sometimes.” 
Mrs. Phipps, for her part, declared she would never 
accept an invitation to Dempster’s again ; it was 
getting so very disagreeable to go there, Mrs. Demp- 
ster was often “so strange.” To be sure, there were 


76 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


dreadful stories about the way Dempster used his 
wife; but in Mrs. Phipps’s opinion, it was six of 
one and half-a-dozen of the other. Mrs. Dempster 
had never been like other women ; she had alwaysa 
flighty way with her, carrying parcels of snuff to old 
Mrs. Tooke, and going to drink tea with Mrs. Brin- 
ley, the carpenter's wife; and then never taking 
care of her clothes, always wearing the same things 
week-day or Sunday. A man has a poor look-out 
with a wife of that sort. Mr. Phipps, amiable and 
laconic, wondered how it was women were so fond 
of running each other down. 

Mr. Pratt having been called in provisionally to 
a patient of Mr. Pilgrim’s in a case of compound 
fracture, observed in a friendly colloquy with his 
brother surgeon the next day, — 

“So Dempster has left off driving himself, I see; 
he won't end with a broken neck, afterall. You ’ll 
have a case of meningitis and delirium tremens 
instead. ” 

“Ah,” said Mr. Pilgrim, “he can hardly stand 
it much longer at the rate he’s going on, one 
would think. He’s been confoundedly cut up 
about that business of Armstrong’s, I fancy. It 
may do him some harm, perhaps, but Dempster 
must have feathered his nest pretty well; he can 
afford to lose a little business. ” 

“ His business will outlast him, that’s pretty 
clear,” said Pratt; “he’ll run down like a watch 
with a broken spring one of these days. ” 

Another prognostic of evil to Dempster came at 
the beginning of March; for then little “Mam- 
sey ” died,— died suddenly. The housemaid found 
her seated motionless in her arm-chair, her knit- 
ting fallen down, and the tortoise-shell cat repos- 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. Ji 


ing on it unreproved. The little white old woman 
had ended her wintry age of patient sorrow, 
believing to the last that “ Robert might have 
been a good husband as he had been a good son. ” 
When the earth was thrown on Mamsey’s coffin, 
and the son, in crape scarf and hat-band, turned 
away homeward, his good angel, lingering with out- 
stretched wing on the edge of the grave, cast one ° 
despairing look after him, and took flight forever. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


’ Tue last week in March —three weeks after old 
Mrs. Dempster died — occurred the unpleasant 
winding-up of affairs between Dempster and Mr. 
Pryme, and under this additional source of irrita- 
tion the attorney’s diurnal drunkenness had taken 
on its most ill-tempered and brutal phase. On 
the Friday morning before setting out for Roth- 
erby he told his wife that he had invited “ four 
men ” to dinner at half-past six that evening. The 
previous night had been a terrible one for Janet; 
and when her husband broke his grim morning 
silence to say these few words, she was looking so 
blank and listless that he added in a loud, sharp 
key, “ Do you hear what I say? or must I tell the 
cook?” She started, and said, “ Yes, I hear. ” 

“Then mind and have a dinner provided, and 
don t go mooning about like crazy Jane.” 

Half an hour afterwards Mrs. Raynor, quietly 
busy in her kitchen with her household labours, 
— for she had only a little twelve-year-old girl as 
a servant, — heard with trembling the rattling of 
the garden gate and the opening of the outer door. 
She knew the step, and in one short moment she 
lived beforehand through the coming scene. She 
hurried out of the kitchen, and there in the pas- 
sage, as she had felt, stood Janet, her eyes worn 
as if by night-long watching, her dress careless, her 
step languid. No cheerful morning greeting to her 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 79 


mother, —no kiss. She turned into the parlour, 
and, seating herself on the sofa opposite her 
mother’s chair, looked vacantly at the walls and 
furniture until the corners of her mouth began to 
tremble, and her dark eyes filled with tears that 
fell unwiped down her cheeks. The mother sat 
silently opposite to her, afraid to speak. She felt 
sure there was nothing new the matter,— sure that 
the torrent of words would come sooner or later. 

“Mother! why don’t you speak to me?” Janet 
burst out at last; “ you don’t care about my suffer- 
ing; you are blaming me because I feel — because 
I am miserable. ” 

“My child, Iam not blaming you, — my heart 
is bleeding for you. Your head is bad this morn- 
ing,— you have had a bad night. Let me make 
you a cup of tea now. Perhaps you didn’t like 
your breakfast. ” | 

“Ves, that is what you always think, mother. 
It is the old story, you think. You don’t ask me 
what it is I have had to bear. You are tired of 
hearing me. You are cruel, like the rest; every one 
is cruel in this world. Nothing but blame — blame 
— blame; never any pity. God is cruel to have 
sent me into the world to bear all this misery. ” 

“ Janet, Janet, don’t say so. It is not for us to 
judge; we must submit; we must be thankful for 
the gift of life.” 

“Thankful for life! why should I be thankful? 
God has made me with a heart to feel, and He has 
sent me nothing but misery. How could I help 
it? How could I know what would come? Why 
didn’t you tell me, mother ?— why did you let me 
marry? You knew what brutes men could be; 
and there’s no help for me, —no hope. I can’t 


89 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


kill myself. I’ve tried; but I can’t leave this 
world and go to another. There may be no pity 
for me there, as there is none here. ” 

“Janet, my child, there zs pity. Have I ever 
done anything but love you? And there is pity in 
God. Hasn’t He put pity into your heart for 
many a poor sufferer? Where did it come from, if 
not from Him?” 

Janet’s nervous irritation now broke out into 
sobs instead of complainings; and her mother was 
thankful, for after that crisis there would very 
likely come relenting, and tenderness, and com- 
parative calm. She went out to make some tea; 
and when she returned with the tray in her hands, 
Janet had dried her eyes, and now turned them 
towards her mother with a faint attempt to smile; 
but the poor face, in its sad blurred beauty, looked 
all the more piteous. 

“Mother will insist upon her tea,” she said, 
“and I really think I can drink a cup. But I 
must go home directly, for there are people coming 
to dinner, Could you go with me and help me, 
mother ? ” 

Mrs. Raynor was always ready to do that. She 
went to Orchard Street with Janet, and remained 
with her through the day, — comforted, as evening 
approached, to see her become more cheerful and 
willing to attend to her toilet. At half-past five 
everything was in order. Janet was dressed; and 
when the mother had kissed her and said good-by, 
she could not help pausing a moment in sorrowful 
admiration at the tall rich figure, looking all the 
grander for the plainness of the deep mourning 
dress, and the noble face with its massy folds of 
black hair, made matronly by a simple white cap. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 81 


Janet had that enduring beauty which belongs to 
pure majestic outline and depth of tint. Sorrow 
and neglect leave their traces on such beauty, but 
it thrills us to the last like a glorious Greek tem- 
ple, which, for all the loss it has suffered from 
time and barbarous hands, has gained a solemn 
history, and fills our imagination the more because 
it 1s incomplete to the sense, 

It was six o’clock before Dempster returned from 
Rotherby. He had evidently drunk a great deal, 
and was in an angry humour; but Janet, who had 
gathered some little courage and forbearance from 
the consciousness that she had done her best to-day, 
was determined to speak pleasantly to him. 

“ Robert,” she said gently, as she saw him seat 
himself in the dining-room in his dusty snuffy 
clothes, and take some documents out of his 
pocket, “ will you not wash and change your dress ? 
It will refresh you. ” 

“ Leave me alone, will you?” said Dempster, in 
his most brutal tone. 

“Do change your coat and waistcoat, they are 
so dusty. I[’ve laid all your things out ready.” 

“Qh, you have, have you?” After a few min- 
utes he rose very deliberately and walked upstairs 
into his bedroom. Janet had often been scolded 
before for not laying out his clothes, and she 
thought now, not without some wonder, that this 
attention of hers had brought him to compliance. 

Presently he called out, “ Janet!” and she went 
upstairs. 

“Here! take that!” he said, as soon as she 
reached the door, flinging at her the coat she had 
laid out. “ Another time, leave me to do as I 
please, will you?” 

VOL. Ir. — 6 


82 SCENES OF CLERICAL LiFE. 


The coat, flung with vreat force, only brushed 
her shoulder, and fell some distance within the 
drawing-room, the door of which stood open just 
opposite. She hastily retreated as she saw the 
waistcoat coming, and one by one the clothes she 
had laid out were all flung into the drawing-room. 

Janet’s face flushed with anger, and for the first 
time in her life her resentment overcame the long- 
cherished pride that made her hide her griefs from 
the world. There are moments when by some 
strange impulse we contradict our past selves, — 
fatal moments, when a fit of passion, like a lava 
stream, lays low the work of half our lives. Janet 
thought, “I will not pick up the clothes; they 
shall lie there until the visitors come, and he shall 
be ashamed of himself.” 

There was a knock at the door, and she made 
haste to seat herself in the drawing-room, lest the 
servant should enter and remove the clothes, which 
were lying half on the table and half on the ground. 
Mr. Lowme entered with a less familiar visitor, a 
client of Dempster’s; and the next moment Demp- 
ster himself came in. 

His eye fell at once on the clothes, and then 
turned for an instant with a devilish glance of 
eoncentrated hatred on Janet, who, still flushed 
and excited, affected unconsciousness. After shak- 
ing hands with his visitors, he immediately rang 
the bell. 

Take those clothes away!” he said to the ser- 
vant, not looking at Janet again. 

During dinner she kept up her assumed air of 
indifference, and tried to seem in high spirits, 
laughing and talking more than usual. In reality, 
she felt as if she had defied a wild beast within 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 83 


the four walls of his den, and he was crouching 
backward in preparation for his deadly spring. 
Dempster affected to take no notice of her, talked 
obstreperously, and drank steadily. 

About eleven the party dispersed, with the ex- 
ception of Mr. Budd, who had joined them after 
dinner, and appeared disposed to stay drinking a 
little longer. Janet began to hope that he would 
stay long enough for Dempster to become heavy 
and stupid, and so to fall asleep downstairs, which 
was a rare but occasional ending of his nights. She 
told the servants to sit up no longer, and she her- 
self undressed and went to bed, trying to cheat her 
imagination into the belief that the day was ended 
for her. But when she lay down, she became 
more intensely awake than ever. Everything she 
had taken this evening seemed only to stimulate 
her senses and her apprehensions to new vividness. 
Her heart beat violently, and she heard every 
sound in the house. 

At last, when it was twelve, she heard Mr. 
Budd go out; she heard the door slam. Dempster 
had not moved. Was he asleep? Would he for- 
get? The minute seemed long, while, with a 
quickening pulse, she was on the stretch to catch 
every sound. 


“Janet!” The loud jarring voice seemed to 
strike her like a hurled weapon. 
“Janet!” he called again, moving out of the 


dining-room to the foot of the stairs. 

There was a pause of a minute. 

“Tf you don’t come, I ’11 kill you.” 

Another pause, and she heard him turn back 
into the dining-room. He was gone for a light, — 
perhaps for a weapon. Perhaps he would kill her 


84 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


Let him. JTife was as hideous as death. For 
years she had been rushing on to some unknown 
but certain horror; and now she was close upon it. 
She was almost glad. She was in a state of 
flushed feverish defiance that neutralized her 
woman’s terrors. 

She heard his heavy step on the stairs; she saw 
the slowly advancing light. Then she saw the 
tall massive figure, and the heavy face, now fierce 
with drunken rage. He had nothing but the can- 
dle in his hand. He set it down on the table, 
and advanced close to the bed. 

“So you think you ’l] defy me, do you? We’ll 
see how long that will last. Get up, madam; out 
of bed this instant! ” 

In the close presence of the dreadful man — of 
this huge crushing force, armed with savage will 
—poor Janet’s desperate defiance all forsook her, 
and her terrors came back. ‘Trembling she got up, 
and stood helpless in her nightdress before her 
husband. 

He seized her with his heavy grasp by the 
shoulder, and pushed her before him. 

“T’ll cool your hot spirit for you! Ill teach 
you to brave me!” 

Slowly he pushed her along before him, down- 
stairs and through the passage, where a small oil- 
lamp was still flickering. What was he going to 
do to her? She thought every moment he was 
going to dash her before him on the ground. But 
she gave no scream, —she only trembled. 

He pushed her on to the entrance, and held her 
firmly in his grasp while he lifted the latch of the 
door. Then he opened the door a little way, 
thrust her out, and slammed it behind her. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 85 


For a short space it seemed like a deliverance 
to Janet. The harsh northeast wind that blew 
through her thin nightdress, and sent her long 
heavy black hair streaming, seemed like the breath 
of pity after the grasp of that threatening monster. 
But soon the sense of release from an overpowering 
terror gave way before the sense of the fate that 
had really come upon her. 

This, then, was what she had been travelling 
towards through her long years of misery! Not 
yet death. Oh ! if she had been brave enough for 
it, death would have been better. The servants 
slept at the back of the house; it was impossible 
to make them hear, so that they might let her in 
again quietly, without her husband’s knowledge. 
And she would not have tried. He had thrust her 
out, and it should be forever. 

There would have been dead silence in Orchard 
Street but for the whistling of the wind and the 
swirling of the March dust on the pavement. 
Thick clouds covered the sky; every door was 
closed ; every window was dark. No ray of light 
fell on the tall white figure that stood in lonely 
misery on the door-step; no eye rested on Janet 
as she sank down on the cold stone, and looked 
into the dismal night. She seemed to be looking 
into her own blank future. 


CHAPTER XV. 


Tur stony street, the bitter northeast wind and 
darkness —and in the midst of them a tender 
woman thrust out from her husband’s home in her 
thin nightdress, the harsh wind cutting her naked 
feet, and driving her long hair away from her halt- 
clad bosom, where the poor heart is crushed with 
anguish and despair. 

The drowning man, urged by the supreme agony 
lives in an instant through all his happy and un- 
happy past; when the dark flood has fallen like 
a curtain, memory, in a single moment, sees the 
drama acted over again. And even in those earlier 
crises, which are but types of death, —when we 
are cut off abruptly from the life we have known, 
when we can no longer expect to-morrow to resem- 
ble yesterday, and find ourselves by some sudden 
shock on the confines of the unknown, — there is 
often the same sort of lightning-flash through the 
dark and unfrequented chambers of memory. 

When Janet sat down shivering on the door- 
stone, with the door shut upon her past life, and 
the future black and unshapen before her as the 
night, the scenes of her childhood, her youth, 
and her painful womanhood rushed back upon 
her consciousness, and made one picture with her 
present desolation. The petted child taking her 
newest toy to bed with her, —the young girl, 
proud in strength and beauty, dreaming that life 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 87 


was an easy thing, and that it was pitiful weak- 
ness to be unhappy, —the bride, passing with 
trembling joy from the outer court to the inner 
sanctuary of woman’s life,— the wife, beginning 
her initiation into sorrow, wounded, resenting, yet 
still hoping and forgiving, —the poor bruised 
woman, seeking through weary years the one 
refuge of despair, oblivion, — Janet seemed to her- 
self all these in the same moment that she was 
conscious of being seated on the cold stone under 
the shock of a new misery. All her early glad- 
ness, all her bright hopes and illusions, all her 
gifts of beauty and affection, served only to darken 
the riddle of her life; they were the betraying 
promises of a cruel destiny which had brought out 
those sweet blossoms only that the winds and 
storms might have a greater work of desolation, 
which had nursed her like a pet fawn into tender- 
ness and fond expectation, only that she might feel 
a keener terror in the clutch of the panther. Her 
mother had sometimes said that troubles were sent 
to make us better and draw us nearer to God. 
What mockery that seemed to Janet! Hez troubles 
had been sinking her lower from year to year, 
pressing upon her like heavy fever-laden vapours, 
and perverting the very plenitude of her nature 
into a deeper source of disease. Her wretchedness 
had been a perpetually tightening instrument of 
torture, which had gradually absorbed all the other 
sensibilities of her nature into the sense of pain 
and the maddened craving for relief. Oh, if some 
ray of hope, of pity, of consolation, would pierce 
through the horrible gloom, she might believe then 
in a Divine love,— ina heavenly Father who cared 
for His children! But now she had no faith, no 


58 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


trust. There was nothing she could lean on in 
the wide world, for her mother was only a fellow- 
sufferer in her own lot. The poor patient woman 
could do httle more than mourn with her daugh- 
ter: she had humble resignation enough to sustain 
her own soul, but she could no more give comfort 
and fortitude to Janet than the withered ivy- 
covered trunk can bear up its strong, full-boughed 
offspring crashing down under an Alpine storm. 
Janet felt she was alone: no human soul had 
measured her anguish, had understood her self- 
despair, had entered into her sorrows and her sins 
with that deep-sighted sympathy which is wiser 
than all blame, more potent than all reproof,— such 
sympathy as had swelled her own heart for many 
a sufferer. And if there was any Divine Pity, she 
could not feel it; it kept aloof from her, it poured 
no balm into her wounds, it stretched out no hand 
to bear up her weak resolve, to fortify her fainting 
courage, 

Now, in her utmost loneliness, she shed no tear: 
she sat staring fixedly into the darkness, while 
inwardly she gazed at her own past, almost Josing 
the sense that it was her own, or that she was 
anything more than a spectator at a strange and 
dreadful play. 

The loud sound of the church clock, striking 
one, startled her. She had not been there more 
than half an hour, then? And it seemed to her 
as if she had been there half the night. She was 
getting benumbed with cold. With that strong in- 
stinctive dread of pain and death, which had made 
her recoil from suicide, she started up; and the 
disagreeable sensation of resting on her benumbed 
feet helped to recall her completely to the sense of 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 89 


the present. The wind was beginning to make 
rents in the clouds, and there came every now and 
then a dim light of stars that frightened her more 
than the darkness; it was like a cruel finger point- 
ing her out in her wretchedness and humiliation ; 
it made her shudder at the thought of the morning 
twilight. What could she do? Not go to her 
mother, — not rouse her in the dead of night to tell 
her this. Her mother would think she was a 
spectre; it would be enough to kill her with hor- 
ror. And the way there was so long... if she 
should meet some one... yet she must seek 
some shelter, somewhere to hide herself, Five 
doors off there was Mrs. Pettifer’s: that kind 
woman would take her in. It was of no use now 
to be proud and mind about the world’s knowing: 
she had nothing to wish for, nothing to care about; 
only she could not help shuddering at the thought 
of braving the morning light, there in the street, 
—she was frightened at the thought of spending 
long hours in the cold. Life might mean anguish, 
might mean despair; but —oh, she must clutch 
it, though with bleeding fingers; her feet must 
cling to the firm earth that the sunlight would 
revisit, not slip into the untried abyss, where she 
might long even for familiar pains. 

Janet trod slowly with her naked feet on the 
rough pavement, trembling at the fitful gleams of 
starlight, and supporting herself by the wall, as 
the gusts of wind drove right against her. The 
very wind was cruel: it tried to push her back 
from the door where she wanted to go and knock 
and ask for pity. 

Mrs. Pettifer’s house did not look into Orchard 
Street: it stood a little way up a wide passage 


go SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


which opened into the street through an archway. 
Janet turned up the archway, and saw a faint light 
coming from Mrs. Pettifer’s bedroom window. The 
glimmer of a rushlight from a room where a friend 
was lying was like a ray of mercy to Janet, after 
that long, long time of darkness and loneliness; it 
would not be so dreadful to awake Mrs. Pettifer as 
she had thought. Yet she lingered some minutes 
at the door before she gathered courage to knock ; 
she felt as if the sound must betray her to others 
besides Mrs. Pettifer, though there was no other 
dwelling that opened into the passage, — only ware- 
houses and outbuildings. There was no gravel for 
her to throw up at the window, nothing but heavy 
pavement; there was no door-bell; she must knock. 
Her first rap was very timid, — one feeble fall of the 
knocker; and then she stood still again for many 
minutes; but presently she rallied her courage and 
knocked several times together, not loudly, but 
rapidly, so that Mrs Pettifer, if she only heard 
the sound, could not mistake it. And she had 
heard it, for by and by the casement of her win- 
dow was opened, and Janet perceived that she was 
bending out to try and discern who it was at the 
door. 

“tt is I, MrssePettiter; itis Janet: Dempster 
Take me in, for pity’s sake.” 

“Merciful God! what has happened ? ” 

“Robert has turned me out. I have been in the 
cold a long while. ” 

Mrs. Pettifer said no more, but hurried away 
from the window, and was soon at the door with a 
light in her hand. 

“Come in, my poor dear, come in,” said the 
good woman in a tremulous voice, drawing Janet 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. Ol 


within the door. “Come into my warm bed, and 
may God in heaven save and comfort you.” 

The pitying eyes, the tender voice, the warm 
touch, caused a rush of new feeling in Janet. Her 
heart swelled, and she burst out suddenly, hke a 
child, into loud passionate sobs. Mrs. Pettifer 
could not help crying with her, but she said, 
“Come upstairs, my dear, come. Don’t linger in 
the cold.” 

She drew the poor sobbing thing gently up- 
stairs, and persuaded her to get into the warm bed. 
But it was long before Janet could lie down. She 
sat leaning her head on her knees, convulsed by 
sobs, while the motherly woman covered her with 
clothes and held her arms round her to comfort her 
with warmth. At last the hysterical passion had 
exhausted itself, and she fell back on the pillow; 
but her throat was still agitated by piteous after- 
sobs, such as shake a little child even when it has 
found a refuge from its alarms on its mother’s lap. 

Now Janet was getting quieter, Mrs. Pettifer 
determined to go down and make a cup of tea, — the 
first thing a kind old woman thinks of as a solace 
and restorative under all calamities. Happily 
there was no danger of awaking her servant, a 
heavy girl of sixteen, who was snoring blissfully 
in the attic, and might be kept ignorant of the 
way in which Mrs. Dempster had come in. So 
Mrs. Pettifer busied herself with rousing the 
kitchen fire, which was kept in under a huge 
“raker,” —a possibility by which the coal of the 
midland counties atones for all its slowness and 
white ashes. 

When she carried up the tea, Janet was lying 
quite still; the spasmodic agitation had ceased, 


92 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


and she seemed lost in thought; her eyes were 
fixed vacantly on the rushlight shade, and all the 
lines of sorrow were deepened in her face. 

“Now, my dear,” said Mrs. Pettifer, “let me 
persuade you to drink a cup of tea; you ’ll find it 
warm you and soothe you very much. Why, dear 
heart, your feet are like ice still. Now, do drink 
this tea, and I 11 wrap ’em up in flannel, and then 
they “ll get warm. ” 

Janet turned her dark eyes on her old friend, 
and stretched out her arms. She was too much 
oppressed to say anything; her suffering lay like 
a heavy weight on her power of speech; but she 
wanted to kiss the good kind woman. Mrs. 
Pettifer, setting down the cup, bent towards the 
sad beautiful face, and Janet kissed her with ear- 
nest sacramental kisses, — such kisses as seal a new 
and closer bond between the helper and the helped. 

She drank the tea obediently, “It does warm 
me,” she said. “ But now you will get into bed. 
I shall lie still now. ” 

Mrs Pettifer felt it was the best thing she could 
do to lie down quietly and say no more. She 
hoped Janet might go to sleep. As for herself, 
with that tendency to wakefulness common to 
advanced years, she found it impossible to com- 
pose herself to sleep again after this agitating 
surprise. She lay listening to the clock, wonder- 
ing what had led to this new outrage of Dempster’s, 
praying for the poor thing at her side, and pitying 
the mother who would have to hear it all to-morrow. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


JANET lay still, as she had promised; but the tea, 
which had warmed her and given her a sense of 
greater bodily ease, had only heightened the pre- 
vious excitement of her brain. Her ideas had a 
new vividness, which made her feel as if she had 
only seen life through a dim haze before; her 
thoughts, instead of springing from the action of 
her own mind, were external existences, that 
thrust themselves imperiously upon her like 
haunting visions. The future took shape after 
shape of misery before her, always ending in her 
being dragged back again to her old life of terror 
and stupor and fevered despair. Her husband 
had so long overshadowed her life that her imagi- 
nation could not keep bold of a condition in which 
that great dread was absent; and even his absence 
— what was it? Only a dreary vacant flat, where 
there was nothing to strive after, nothing to long 
for. 

At last the light of morning quenched the rush- 
light, and Janet’s thoughts became more and more 
fragmentary and confused. She was every moment 
slipping off the level on which she lay thinking, 
down, down into some depth from which she tried 
to rise again with a start. Slumber was stealing 
over her weary brain, — that uneasy slumber which 
is only better than wretched waking, because the 
life we seemed to live in it determines no wretched 


94° SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


future, because the things we do and suffer in it 
are but hateful shadows, and leave no impress that 
petrifies into an irrevocable past. 

She had scarcely been asleep an hour when her 
movements became more violent, her mutterings 
more frequent and agitated, till at last she started 
up with a smothered cry, and looked wildly round 
her, shaking with terror. 

“Don’t be frightened, dear Mrs. Dempster,” 
said Mrs. Pettifer, who was up and dressing; “ you 
are with me, your old friend, Mrs. Pettifer. 
Nothing will harm you.” 

Janet sank back again on her pillow, still trem- 
bling. After lying silent a little while, she said: 
“Tt was a horrible dream. Dear Mrs. Pettifer, 
don’t let any one know I am here. Keep it a 
secret. If he finds out, he will come and drag me 
back again. ” 

“No, my dear, dependon me. I’ve just thought 
I shall send the servant home on a holiday, —I’ve 
promised her a good while. I’1l send her away as 
soon as she’s had her breakfast, and she ’]l] have 
no occasion to know you’re here. There’s no 
holding servants’ tongues, if you let ’em know 
anything. What they don’t know, they won’t 
tell; you may trust ’em so far. But shouldn’t 
you like me to go and fetch your mother?” 

“No, not yet, not yet. I can’t bear to see her 
yet. ” | 
“Well, it shall be just as you like. Now try 
and get to sleep again. I shall leave you for an 
hour or two, and send off Phoebe, and then bring 
you some breakfast. I’ll lock the door behind 
me, so that the girl may n’t come in by chance. ” 

The daylight changes the aspect of misery to us, 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 95 


as of everything else In the night it presses on 
our imagination, —the forms it takes are false, fit- 
ful, exaggerated ; in broad day it sickens our sense 
with the dreary persistence of definite measurable 
reality. The man who looks with ghastly horror 
on all his property aflame in the dead of night 
has not half the sense of destitution he will have 
in the morning, when he walks over the ruins 
lying blackened in the pitiless sunshine. That 
moment of intensest depression was come to Janet, 
when the daylight which showed her the walls 
and chairs and tables, and all the commonplace 
reality that surrounded her, seemed to lay bare the 
future too, and bring out into oppressive distinct- 
ness all the details of a weary life to be lived from 
day to day, with no hope to strengthen her against 
that evil habit, which she loathed in retrospect 
and yet was powerless to resist. Her husband 
would never consent to her living away from him: 
she was become necessary to his tyranny ; he would 
never willingly loosen his grasp on her. - She had 
a vague notion of some protection the law might 
vive her, if she could prove her life in danger from 
him; but she shrank utterly, as she had always 
done, from any active, public resistance or ven- 
geance: she felt too crushed, too faulty, too liable 
to reproach, to have the courage, even if she had 
had the wish, to put herself openly in the position 
of a wronged woman seeking redress. She had no 
strength to sustain her in a course of self-defence 
and independence: there was a darker shadow over 
her life than the dread of her husband. — it was 
the shadow of self-despair. The easiest thing 
would be to go away and hide herself from him. . 
But then there was her mother: Robert had all 


oom SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


her little property in his hands, and that little 
was scarcely enough to keep her in comfort with- 
out his aid. If Janet went away alone, he would 
be sure to persecute her mother; and if she did go 
away, — what then? She must work to maintain 
herself; she must exert herself, weary and hope- 
less as she was, to begin life afresh. How hard 
that seemed to her! Janet’s nature did not belie 
her grand face and form: there was energy, there 
was strength in it; but it was the strength of the 
vine, which must have its broad leaves and rich 
clusters borne up by a firm stay. And now she 
had nothing to rest on, —no faith, no love. If 
her mother had been very feeble, aged, or sickly, 
Janet’s deep pity and tenderness might have made 
a daughter's duties an interest and a solace; but 
Mrs. Raynor had never needed tendance. She had 
always been giving help to her daughter; she had 
always been a sort of humble ministering spirit; 
and it was one of Janet’s panes of memory that, 
instead of being her mother’s comfort, she had 
been her mother’s trial Everywhere the same 
sadness! Her life was a sun-dried, barren tract, 
where there was no shadow, and where all the 
waters were bitter. 

No! She suddenly thought—and the thought 
was like an electric shock — there was one spot in 
her memory which seemed to promise her an un- 
tried spring, where the waters might be sweet. 
That short interview with Mr. Tryan had come 
back upon her, — his voice, his words, his Jook, 
which told her that he knew sorrow. His words 
had implied that he thought his death was near, 
yet he had a faith which enabled him to labour, — 
enabled him to give comfort to others. That look 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 97 


of his came back on her with a vividness greater 
than it had had for her in reality: surely he knew 
more of the secrets of sorrow than other men: per- 
haps he had some message of comfort, different 
from the feeble words she had been used to hear 
from others. She was tired, she was sick of that 
barren exhortation, — Do right, and keep a clear 
conscience, and God will reward you, and your 
troubles will be easier to bear. She wanted 
strength to do right, —she wanted something to 
rely on besides her own resolutions; for was not 
the path behind her all strewn with broken resolu- 
tions? How could she trust in new ones? She 
had often heard Mr. Tryan laughed at for being 
fond of great sinners. She began to see a new 
meaning in those words; he would perhaps under- 
stand her helplessness, her wants. If she could 
pour out her heart to him! If she could for the 
first time in her life unlock all the chambers of 
her soul! 

The impulse to confession almost always requires 
the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart; and 
in our moments of spiritual need, the man to 
whom we have no tie but our common nature 
seems nearer to us than mother, brother, or friend. 
Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves 
from each other behind a screen of trivial words 
and deeds; and those who sit with us at the same 
hearth are often the farthest off from the deep 
human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and 
unacted good. 

When Mrs, Pettifer came back to her, turning 
the key and opening the door very gently, Janet, 
instead of being asleep, as her good friend had 
hoped, was intensely occupied with her new 

VOL. 11 —7 


98 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


thought. She longed to ask Mrs. Pettifer if she 
could see Mr. Tryan; but she was arrested by 
doubts and timidity. He might not feel for her, 
—he might be shocked at her confession, — he 
might talk to her of doctrines she could not under- 
stand or believe. She could not make up her 
mind yet; but she was too restless under this 
mental struggle to remain in bed. 

“Mrs. Pettifer,” she said, “ I can’t he here any 
longer; I must get up. Will you lend me some 
clothes ? ” 

Wrapped in such drapery as Mrs. Pettifer could 
find for her tall figure, Janet went down into the 
little parlour, and tried to take some of the break- 
fast her friend had prepared for her. But her 
effort was not a successful one; her cup of tea and 
bit of toast were only half finished. The leaden 
weight of discouragement pressed upon her more 
and more heavily. The wind had fallen, and a 
drizzling rain had come on; there was no prospect 
from Mrs. Pettifer’s parlour but a blank wall; and 
as Janet looked out at the window, the rain and 
the smoke-blackened bricks seemed to blend them- 
selves in sickening identity with her desolation of 
spirit and the headachy weariness of her body. 

Mrs. Pettifer got through her household work as 
soon as she could, and sat down with her sewing, 
hoping that Janet would perhaps be able to talk a 
little of what had passed, and tind some relief by 
unbosoming herself in that way. But Janet could 
not speak to her; she was importuned with the 
longing to see Mr. Tryan, and yet hesitating to 
express lt. 

Two hours passed in this way. The rain went 
or, drizzling, and Janet sat still, leaning her ach- 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 99 


ing head on her hand, and looking alternately at 
the fire and out of the window. She felt this 
could not last, — this motionless, vacant misery. 
She must determine on something, she must take 
some step; and yet everything was so difficult. 

It was one o’clock, and Mrs. Pettifer rose from 
her seat, saying, “ I must go and see about dinner. ” 

The movement and the sound startled Janet 
from her reverie. It seemed as if an opportunity 
were escaping her, and she said hastily, “Is Mr. 
Tryan in the town to-day, do you think?” 

“ No, I should think not, being Saturday, you 
know,” said Mrs. Pettifer, her face lighting up 
with pleasure; “ but he would come if he was sent 
for. I can send Jesson’s boy with a note to him 
any time. Should you like to see him?” 

aay espe phin keleshould:” 

“Then I ll send for him this instant. ” 


CHAPTER XVII. 


WHEN Dempster awoke in the morning, he was at 
no loss to account to himself for the fact that 
Janet was not by his side. His hours of drunken- 
ness were not cut off from his other hours by any 
blank wall of oblivion; he remembered what Janet 
had done to offend him the evening before, he 
remembered what he had done to her at mid- 
night, just as he would have remembered if he 
had been consulted about a right of road. 

The remembrance gave him a definite ground for 
the extra ill-humour which had attended his waking 
every morning this week, but he would not admit 
to himself that it cost him any anxiety. “ Pooh!” 
he said inwardly, “she would go straight to her 
mother’s. She’s as timid as a hare; and she’ll 
never let anybody know about it. She ‘ll be back 
again before night.” 

But it would be as well for the servants not to 
know anything of the affair; so he collected the 
clothes she had taken off the night before, and 
threw them into a fireproof closet of which he 
always kept the key in his pocket. When he 
went downstairs, he said to the housemaid, “ Mrs. 
Dempster is gone to her mother’s; bring in the 
breakfast. ” 

The servants, accustomed to hear domestic broils 
and to see their mistress put on her bonnet hastily 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 10! 


and go to her mother’s, thought it only something 
a little worse than usual that she should have 
gone thither, in consequence of a violent quarrel, 
either at midnight, or in the early morning before 
they were up. The housemaid told the cook what 
she supposed had happened; the cook shook her 
head and said, “ Hh, dear, dear!” but they both 
expected to see their mistress back again in an 
hour or two. e 

Dempster, on his return home the evening be- 
fore, had ordered his man, who lived away from 
the house, to bring up his horse and gig from the 
stables at ten, After breakfast he said to the 
housemaid, “ No one need sit up for me to-night; 
I shall not be at home till to-morrow evening ;” 
and then he walked to the office to give some 
orders, expecting, as he returned, to see the man 
waiting with his gig. But though the church 
clock had struck ten, no gig was there. In Demp- 
ster’s mood this was more than enough to exasper- 
ate him. He went in to take his accustomed glass 
of brandy before setting out, promising himself 
the satisfaction of presently thundering at Dawes 
for being a few minutes behind his time An 
outbreak of temper towards his man was not com- 
mon with him; for Dempster, like most tyrannous 
people, had that dastardly kind of self-restraint 
which enabled him to control his temper where it 
suited his own convenience to do so; and feeling 
the value of Dawes, a steady punctual fellow, he 
not only gave him high wages, but usually treated 
him with exceptional civility. This morning, 
however, ill-humour got the better of prudence, 
and Dempster was determined to rate him soundly; 
a resolution for which Dawes gave him much 


102 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


better ground than he expected. Five minutes, 
ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, had passed, and 
Dempster was setting off to the stables in a back 
street to see what was the cause of the delay, when 
Dawes appeared with the gig, 

“What the devil do you keep me here for,” 
thundered Dempster, “kicking my heels like a 
begearly tailor waiting for a carrier’s cart? I 
ordered you to be here at ten. We might have 
driven to Whitlow by this time. ” 

“Why, one o’ the traces was welly 1’ two, an’ I 
had to take it to Brady’s to be mended, an’ he 
didn’t get 1t done i’ time. ~ 

“ Then why didn’t you take it to him last night ? 
Because of your damned laziness, I suppose. Do 
you think I give you wages for you to choose your 
own hours, and come dawdling up a quarter of an 
hour after my time?” 

“Come, give me good words, will yer?” said 
Dawes, sulkily. “I’m not lazy, nor no man shall 
call me lazy. I know well anuff what you gi’ me 
wages for; it’s for doin’ what yer won't find many 
men as ‘ull do.” 

“What! you impudent scoundrel,” said Demp- 
ster, getting into the gig, “you think you ’re 
necessary to me, do you? As if a beastly bucket- 
carrying idiot like you wasn’t to be got any day. 
Look out for a new master, then, who'll pay you 
for not doing as you re bid.” 

Dawes’s blood was now fairly up. “I'll look 
out for a master as has got a better charicter nor a 
lyin’ bletherin’ drunkard, an’ I shouldn’t hev to 
go fur.” 

Dempster, furious, snatched the whip from the — 
socket, and gave Dawes a cut which he meant to 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 103 


fall across his shoulders, saying, “ Take that, sir, 
and go to hell with you!” 

Dawes was in the act of turning with the reins 
in his hand when the lash fell, and the cut went 
across his face. With white lips he said, “I°ll 
have the law on yer for that, lawyer as y’ are,” 
and threw the reins on the horge’s back. 

Dempster leaned forward, seized the reins, and 
drove off. 

“ Why, there*s your friend Dempster driving 
out without his man again,” said Mr. Luke Byles, 
who was chatting with Mr, Budd in the Bridge 
Way. “What a fool he is to drive that two- 
wheeled thing! He’ll get pitched on his head 
one of these days, ” 

“ Not he,” said Mr. Budd, nodding to Dempster 
as he passed; “he’s got nine lives, Dempster 
has, ” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Ir was dusk, and the candles were hghted before 
Mr. Tryan knocked at Mrs. Pettifer’s door. Her 
messenger had brought back word that he was not 
at home, and all afternoon Janet had been agitated 
by the fear that he would not come; but as soon 
as that anxiety was removed by the knock at the 
door, she felt a sudden rush of doubt and timidity: 
she trembled and turned cold. 

Mrs, Pettifer went to open the door, and told Mr. 
Tryan, in as few words as possible, what had hap- 
penedin the night. As he laid down his hat and pre- 
pared to enter the parlour, she said, ‘I won’t go in 
with you, for I think perhaps she would rather see 
you go in alone.” 

Janet, wrapped up in a large white shawl which 
threw her dark face into startling relief, was seated 
with her eyes turned anxiously towards the door 
when Mr. Tryan entered. He had not seen her 
since their interview at Sally Martin’s long months 
ago; and he felt a strong movement of compassion 
at the sight of the pain-stricken face which seemed 
to bear written on it the signs of all Janet’s inter- 
vening misery. Her heart gave a great leap, as her 
eyes met his once more. No! she had not deceived 
herself: there was all the sincerity, all the sadness, 
all the deep pity in them her memory had told her 
of; more than it had told her, for in proportion as 
his face had become thinner and more worn, his 
eyes appeared to have gathered intensity. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 105 


He came forward, and putting out his hand, said, 
“Tam so glad you sent for me, — I am so thankful 
you thought I could be any comfort to you.” Janet 
took his hand in silence. She was unable to utter 
any words of mere politeness, or even of gratitude ; 
her heart was too full of other words that had 
welled up the moment she met his pitying glance, 
and felt her doubts fall away. 

They sat down opposite each other, and she said 
in a low voice, while slow difficult tears gathered 
in her aching eyes, — 

“T want to tell you how unhappy I am, — how 
weak and wicked. I feel no strength to live or die. 
I thought you could tell me something that would 
help me.” She paused. 

“Perhaps I can,” Mr. Tryan said, “for in speak- 
ing to me you are speaking to a fellow-sinner who 
has needed just the comfort and help you are 
needing,” 

“And you did find it?” 

“Yes; and I trust you will find it.” 

“Oh, I should like to be good and to do right,” 
Janet burst forth; ‘but indeed, indeed, my lot has 
been a very hard one. I loved my husband very 
dearly when we were married, and I meant to make 
him happy, —I wanted nothing else. But he began 
to be angry with me for little thingsand . . . I don’t 
want to accuse him... but he drank and got 
more and more unkind to me, and then very cruel, 
and he beat me. And that cut me to the heart. 
It made me almost mad sometimes to think all 
our love had come to that... I couldn’t bear up 
against it. I had never been used to drink any- 
thing but water. I hated wine and spirits because 
Robert drank them so; but one day when I was 


106 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


very wretched, and the wine was standing on the 
table, I suddenly . . . I can hardly remember how 
I came to do it ...I1 poured some wine into a 
large glass and drank it. It blunted my feelings, 
and made me more indifferent. After that the 
temptation was always coming, and it got stronger 
and stronger. I was ashamed, and I hated what I 
did; but almost while the thought was passing 
through my mind that I would never do it again, 
I did it. It seemed as if there was a demon in me 
always making me rush to do what I longed not to 
do. And I thought all the more that God was 
cruel; for if he had not sent me that dreadful 
trial, so much worse than other women have to 
bear, I should not have done wrong in that way. 
I suppose it is wicked to think so... I feel as if 
there must be goodness and right above us, but I 
can’t see it, I can’t trust in it. And I have gone on 
in that way for years and years. At one time it 
used to be better now and then, but everything has 
got worse lately: I felt sure it must soon end some- 
how. And last night he turned me out of doors .. . 
I don’t know what to do. I will never go back to 
that life again if I can help it; and yet everything 
else seems so miserable. I feel sure that demon 
will be always urging me to satisfy the craving 
that comes upon me, and the days will go on as 
they have done through all those miserable years. 
I shall always be doing wrong, and hating myself 
after, — sinking lower and lower, and knowing that 
I am sinking. Oh, can you tell me any way of 
getting strength? Have you ever known any one 
like me that got peace of mind and power to do 
right? Can you give me any comfort, any hope? ” 

While Janet was speaking, she had forgotten 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 107 


everything but her misery and her yearning for 
comfort. Her voice had risen from the low tone of 
timid distress to an intense pitch of imploring 
anguish. She clasped her hands tightly, and looked 
at Mr. Tryan with eager questioning eyes, with 
parted trembling lips, with the deep horizontal 
lines of overmastering pain on her brow. In this 
artificial life of ours it is not often we see a human 
face with alla heart’s agony in it, uncontrolled by 
self-consciousness ; when we do see it, it startles us 
as if we had suddenly waked into the real world 
of which this every-day one is but a puppet-show 
copy. For some moments Mr, Tryan was too deeply 
moved to speak. 

“Yes, dear Mrs. Dempster,” he said at last, “there 
as comfort, there 7s hope for you. Believe me there 
is, for I speak from my own deep and hard experi- 
ence.” He paused, as if he had not made up his 
mind to utter the words that were urging them- 
selves to his lips. Presently he continued: “Ten 
years ago, I felt as wretched as you do. I think 
my wretchedness was even worse than yours, for 
I had a heavier sin on my conscience. I had 
suffered no wrong from others as you have, and I 
had injured another irreparably in body and soul. 
The image of the wrong I had done pursued me 
everywhere, and I seemed on the brink of madness. 
I hated my life, for I thought, just as you do, that 
I should go on falling into temptation and doing 
more harm in the world; and I dreaded death, for 
with that sense of guilt on my soul, I felt that 
whatever state I entered on must be one of misery. 
But a dear friend to whom I opened my mind 
showed me it was just such as I —the helpless 
who feel themselves helpless — that God specially 


108 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


invites to come to him, and offers all the riches of 
his salvation: not forgiveness only, — forgiveness 
would be worth little if it left us under the power 
of our evil passions; but strength, — that strength 
which enables us to conquer sin.” 

“But,” said Janet, “I can feel no trust in God. 
He seems always to have left me to myself. I 
have sometimes prayed to him to help me, and yet 
everything has been just the same as before If 
you felt like me, how did you come to have hope 
and trust ?” 

“Do not believe that God has left you to your- 
self. How can you tell but that the hardest trials 
you have known have been only the road by which 
he was leading you to that complete sense of your 
own sin and helplessness, without which you would 
never have renounced all other hopes, and trusted 
in his love alone? I know, dear Mrs. Dempster, L 
know it is hard to bear. I would not speak lightly 
of your sorrows. I feel that the mystery of our life 
is great, and at one time it seemed as dark to me as 
it does to you.” Mr. Tryan hesitated again. He 
saw that the first thing Janet needed was to be 
assured of sympathy. She must be made to feel 
that her anguish was not strange to him; that he 
entered into the only half-expressed secrets of her 
spiritual weakness, before any other message of con- 
solation could find its way to her heart. The tale 
of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips 
that were not felt to be moved by human pity. And 
Janet’s anguish was not strange to Mr. Tryan. He 
had never been in the presence of a sorrow and a 
self-despair that had sent so strong a thrill through 
all the recesses of his saddest experience; and it is 
because sympathy is but a living again through our 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 109 


own past in anew form, that confession often prompts 
a response of confession. Mr.Tryan felt this prompt- 
ing, and his judgment, too, told him that in obeying 
it he would be taking the best means of adminis- 
tering comfort to Janet. Yet he hesitated; as we 
tremble to let in the daylhght on a chamber of relics 
which we have never visited except in curtained 
silence. But the first impulse triumphed, and he 
went on. “I have lived all my life at a distance 
from God. My youth was spent in thoughtless 
self-indulgence, and all my hopes were of a vain 
worldly kind. I had no thought of entering the 
Church; I looked forward to a political career, for 
my father was private secretary to a man high in 
the Whig Ministry, and had been promised strong 
interestin mybehalf. At college I lived in intimacy 
with the gayest men, even adopting follies and vices 
for which I had no taste, out of mere pliancy and 
the love of standing well with my companions. You 
see, I was more guilty even then than you have 
been, for I threw away all the rich blessings of 
untroubled youth and health; I had no excuse in 
my outward lot. But while I was at college that 
event in my life occurred which in the end brought 
on the state of mind I have mentioned to you, — the 
state of self-reproach and despair, which enables 
me to understand to the full what you are suffer- 
ing; and I tell you the facts, because I want you to 
be assured that I am not uttering mere vague words 
when I say that I have been raised from as low a 
depth of sin and sorrow as that in which you feel 
yourself to be. At college I had an attachment to 
a lovely girlof seventeen ; she was very much below 
my own station in life, and I never contemplated 
marrying her; but l induced her to leave her father’s 


“YTO SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


house. I did not mean to forsake her when I left 
college, and I quieted all scruples of conscience by 
promising myself that I would always take care of 
poor Lucy. But on my return from a vacation spent 
in travelling, I found that Lucy was gone, — gone 
away with a gentleman, her neighbours said. I was 
a good deal distressed, but I tried to persuade my- 
self that no harm would come to her. Soon after- 
wards I had an illness which left my health delicate, 
and made all dissipation distasteful to me. Life 
seemed very wearisome and empty, and I looked 
with envy on every one who had some great and 
absorbing object, even on my cousin who was 
preparing to go outas a missionary, and whom I had 
been used to think a dismal, tedious person, because 
he was constantly urging religious subjects upon 
me. We were living in London then; it was three 
years since I had lost sight of Lucy; and one sum- 
mer evening, about nine o’clock, as | was walking 
along Gower Street, I saw a knot of people on the 
causeway before me. As I came up to them, I 
heard one woman say, ‘I tell you she is dead.’ This 
awakened my interest, and 1 pushed my way within 
the circle. The body of a woman dressed in fine 
clothes was lying against a doorstep. Her head 
was bent on one side, and the long curls had fallen 
over her cheek. A tremor seized me when I saw 
the hair: it was light chestnut, — the colour of Lucy’s. 
J knelt down and turned aside the hair; it was Lucy 
— dead — with paint on her cheeks. I found out 
afterwards that she had taken poison, — that she 
was in the power of a wicked woman, — that the 
very clothes on her back were not her own. It was 
then that my past life burst upon me in all its hide- 
ousness, I wished I had never been born. I could n't 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. IIT 


look into the future. Lucy’s dead painted face would 
follow me there, as it did when I looked back into 
the past,— as it did when I sat down to table with 
my friends, when I lay down in my bed, and when 
I rose up. There was only one thing that could 
make life tolerable to me; that was to spend all the 
rest of it in trying to save others from the ruin I had 
brought on one But how was that possible for 
me? Ihad no comfort, no strength, no wisdom in 
my own soul; how could I give them to others ? 
My mind was dark, rebellious, at war with itself 
and with God.” 

Mr. Tryan had been looking away from Janet. 
His face was towards the fire, and he was absorbed 
in the images his memory was recalling. But now 
he turned his eyes on her, and they met hers, fixed 
on him with the look of rapt expectation with 
which one clinging to a slippery summit of rock, 
while the waves are rising higher and_ higher, 
watches the boat that has put from shore to his 
rescue. 

“You see, Mrs. Dempster, how deep my need was. 
I went on in this way for months. I was convinced 
that if I ever got health and comfort, it must be 
from religion. I went to hear celebrated preachers, 
and I read religious books. But I found nothing 
that fitted my own need. The faith which puts the 
sinner in possession of salvation seemed, as I under- 
stood it, to be quite out of my reach. I had no 
faith ; I only felt utterly wretched, under the power 
of habits and dispositions which had wrought hide- 
ous evil. At last, as I told you, I found a friend to 
whom I opened all my feelings, — to whom I con- 
fessed everything. He was a man who had gone 
through very deep experience, and could understand 


112 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


the different wants of different minds. He made it 
clear to me that the only preparation for coming to 
Christ and partaking of his salvation was that very 
sense of guilt and helplessness which was weighing 
me down. He said, You are weary and heavy-laden ; 
well, it is you Christ invites to come to him and find 
rest. Heasks you to cling to him, to lean on him; he 
does not command you to walk alone without stum- 
bling. He does not tell you, as your fellow-men do, that 
you must first merit his love : he neither condemns 
nor reproaches you for the past, he only bids you 
come to him that you may have life: he bids you 
stretch out your hands, and take of the fulness of his 
love. You have only to rest on him as a child rests 
on its mother’s arms, and you will,be upborne by 
his divine strength. That is what is meant by faith. 
Your evil habits, you feel, are too strong for you; 
you are unable to wrestle with them; you know 
beforehand you shall fall. But when once we feel 
our helplessness in that way, and go to the Saviour, 
desiring to be freed from the power as well as the 
punishment of sin, we are no longer left to our own 
strength. As long as we live in rebellion against 
God, desiring to have our own will, seeking happi- 
ness in the things of this world, it 1s as if we shut 
ourselves up in a crowded stifling room, where we 
breathe only poisoned air; but we have only to walk 
out under the infinite heavens, and we breathe the 
pure free air that gives us health and strength and 
gladness. It is just so with God’s spirit: as soon 
as we submit ourselves to his will, as soon as we 
desire to be united to him, and made pure and holy 
it is as if the walls had fallen down that shut us 
out from God, and we are fed with his spirit, which 
gives us new strength.” 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 113 


“That is what I want,” said Janet; “I have left 
off minding about pleasure. I think I could be 
contented in the midst of hardship, if I felt that 
God cared for me, and would give me strength to 
lead a pure life. But tell me, did you soon find 
peace and strength ?” 

“Not perfect peace for a long while, but hope 
and trust, which is strength. No sense of pardon 
for myself could do away with the pain I had in 
thinking what I had helped to bring on another. 
My friend used to urge upon me that my sin 
against God was greater than my sin against her; 
but —it may be from want of deeper spiritual feel- 
ing — that has remained to this hour the sin which 
causes me the bitterest pang. I could never rescue 
Lucy; but by God’s blessing I might rescue other 
weak and falling souls; and that was why I entered 
the Church. IL asked for nothing through the rest 
of my life but that I might be devoted to God’s 
work, without swerving in search of pleasure either 
to the right hand or to the left. It has been often 
a hard struggle — but God has been with me — and 
perhaps it may not last much longer,” 

Mr. Tryan paused. For a moment he had for- 
eotten Janet, and for a moment she had forgotten 
her own sorrows. When she recurred to herself, 
it was with a new feeling. 

“Ah, what a difference between our lives! You 
have been choosing pain, and working, and denying 
yourself; and I have been thinking only of myself. 
I was only angry and discontented because I had 
pain to bear. You never had that wicked feeling 
that I have had so often, did you?-— that God was 
cruel to send me trials and temptations worse than 


others have.” 
VOL. 11.—8 


ae’ SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


“Yes, I had; I had very blasphemous thoughts, 
and I know that spirit of rebellion must have made 
the worst part of your lot. You did not feel how 
impossible it is for us to judge rightly of God's 
dealings, and you opposed yourself to his will. 
But what do we know? We cannot foretell the 
working of the smallest event in our own lot; 
how can we presume to judge of things that are 
so much too high for us? There is nothing that 
becomes us but entire submission, perfect resigna- 
tion. As long as we set up our own will and our 
own wisdom against God’s, we make that wall 
between us and his love which I have spoken of 
just now. But as soon as we lay ourselves entirely 
at his feet, we have enough light given us to guide 
our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears noth- 
ing of the councils that determine the course of the 
great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word 
of command which he must himself obey. I know, 
dear Mrs. Dempster, I know it is hard —the hardest 
thing of all, perhaps —to flesh and blood. But 
carry that difficulty to the Saviour along with all 
your other sins and weaknesses, and ask him to 
pour into you a spirit of submission. He enters 
into your struggles; he has drunk the cup of our 
suffering to the dregs; he knows the hard wrestling 
it costs us to say, ‘Not my will, but Thine be 
done.’ ” 

“Pray with me,” said Janet, —“ pray now that 
I may have light and strength.” 


CHAPTER XIX. 


Berore leaving Janet, Mr. Tryan urged her strongly 
to send for her mother. 

“Do not wound her,” he said, “by shutting her 
out any longer from your troubles. It is right that 
you should be with her.” 

“Ves, 1 will send for her,” said Janet. “But I 
would rather not go to my mother’s yet, because my 
husband is sure to think I am there, and he might 
come and fetch me, I'can’t go back to him ... 
at least, not yet. Ought I to go back to him ?” 

“No, certainly not, at present. Something should 
be done to secure you from violence. Your mother, 
I think, should consult some confidential friend, 
some man of character and experience, who might 
mediate between you and your husband.” | 

“Yes, I will send for my mother directly. But 
I will stay here, with Mrs. Pettifer, till something 
has been done. I want no one to know where I 
am, except you. You will come again, will you 
not? You will not leave me to myself?” 

“You will not be left to yourself. God is with 
you. If I have been able to give you any comfort, 
it is because his power and love have been present 
with us. But I am very thankful that he has 
chosen to work through me. I shall see you again 
to-morrow, — not before evening, for it will be 
Sunday, you know; but after the evening lecture 
I shall be at liberty. You will be in my prayers 


116 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


till then. In the mean time, dear Mrs. Dempster, 
open your heart as much as you can to your mother 
and Mrs. Pettifer. Cast away from you the pride 
that makes us shrink from acknowledging our 
weakness to our friends. Ask them to help you 
in guarding yourself from the least approach of the 
sin you most dread. Deprive yourself as far as 
possible of the very means and opportunity of 
committing it. Every effort of that kind made in 
humility and dependence is a prayer. Promise me 
you will do this.” 

“Yes, I promise you. I know I have always 
been too proud; I could never bear to speak to 
any one about myself. I have been proud towards 
my mother, even; it has always made me angry 
when she has seemed to take notice of my faults.” 

« Ah, dear Mrs. Dempster, you will never say again 
that life is blank, and that there is nothing to live 
for, will you? See what work there is to be done 
in life, both in our own souls and forothers! Surely 
it matters little whether we have more or less of this 
world’s comfort in these short years, when God 1s 
training us for the eternal enjoyment of his love. 
Keep that great end of life before you, and your. 
troubles here will seem only the small hardships of 
a journey. Now I must go.” 

Mr. Tryan rose and held out his hand. Janet 
took it and said, “God has been very good to me in 
sending you to me. I will trust in him. I will try 
to do everything you tell me.” 

Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on 
another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible 
by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the 
hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, 
and bursts forth into tall stem, and broad leaf, and 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 117 


glowing tasselled flower. Ideas are often poor 
ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them ; 
they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot 
make themselves felt. But sometimes they are 
made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm 
breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, 
they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak 
to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a 
living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, 
and its love. Then their presence is a power, then 
they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn 
after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is 
drawn to flame. 

Janet’s dark grand face, still fatigued, had become 
quite calm, and looked up, as she sat, with a humble 
childlike expression at the thin blond face and 
slightly sunken gray eyes which now shone with 
hectic brightness. She might have been taken for an 
image of passionate strength beaten and worn with 
conflict ; and he for an image of the self-renouncing 
faith which has soothed that conflict into rest. As 
he looked at the sweet submissive face, he re- 
membered its look of despairing anguish, and his 
heart was very full as he turned away from her. 
“Let me only live to see this work confirmed, and 
then —” 

It was nearly ten o’clock when Mr. Tryan left, 
but Janet was bent on sending for her mother; so 
Mrs. Pettifer, as the readiest plan, put on her 
bonnet and went herself to fetch Mrs. Raynor. 
The mother had been too long used to expect that 
every fresh week would be more painful than the 
last, for Mrs. Pettifer’s news to come upon her 
with the shock of a surprise. Quietly, without 
any show of distress, she made up a bundle of 


118 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


clothes, and, telling her little maid that she should 
not return home that night, accompanied Mrs. 
Pettifer back in silence. 

When they entered the parlour, Janet, wearied 
out, had sunk to sleep in the large chair which 
stood with its back to the door. The noise of the 
opening door disturbed her, and she was looking 
round wonderingly, when Mrs. Raynor came up 
to her chair, and said, “ It’s your mother, Janet. ” 

“Mother, dear mother!” Janet cried, clasping 
her closely. “I have not been a good tender child 
to you, but I wild be, —I will not grieve you any 
more. ” 

The calmness which had withstood a new sorrow 
was overcome by a new joy, and the mother burst 
into tears. 


CHAPTER XX. 


On Sunday morning the rain had ceased, and 
Janet, looking out of the bedroom window, saw, 
above the house-tops, a shining mass of white 
cloud rolling under the far-away blue sky. It was 
going to be a lovely April day. The fresh sky, 
left clear and calm after the long vexation of wind 
and rain, mingled its mild influence with Janet’s 
new thoughts and prospects. She felt a buoyant 
courage that surprised herself, after the cold crush- 
ing weight of despondency which had oppressed 
her the day before: she could think even of her 
husband’s rage without the old overpowering 
dread. For a delicious hope —the hope of purifi- 
cation and inward peace — had entered into Janet’s 
soul, and made it spring-time there as well as in 
the outer world. 

While her mother was brushing and coiling up 
her thick black hair,— a favourite task, because it 
seemed to renew the days of her daughter’s girl- 
hood, — Janet told how she came to send for Mr. 
Tryan, how she had remembered their meeting at 
Sally Martin’s in the autumn, and had felt an 
irresistible desire to see him, and tell him her sins 
and her troubles. 

“T see God’s goodness now, mother, in ordering 
it so that we should meet in that way, to overcome 
my prejudice against him, and make me feel that 
he was good, and then bringing it back to my 


120 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


mind in the depth of my trouble. You know what 
foolish things I used to say about him, knowing 
nothing of him all the while. And yet he was 
the man who was to give me comfort and help 
when everything else failed me. It is wonderful 
how I feel able to speak to him as I never have 
done to any one before; and how every word he 
says to me enters my heart, and has a new mean- 
ing for me I think it must be because he has - 
felt life more deeply than others, and has a deeper 
faith. I believe everything he says at once. His 
words come to me like rain on the parched ground. 
It has always seemed to me before as if I could see 
behind people’s words, as one sees behind a screen ; 
but in Mr. Tryan it is his very soul that speaks.” 
“Well, my dear child, I love and bless him for 
your sake, if he has given you any comfort, I 
never believed the harm people said of him, though 
I had no desire to go and hear him, for I am con- 
tented with old-fashioned ways. I find more good 
teaching than I can practise in reading my Bible 
at home, and hearing Mr. Crewe at church. But 
your wants are different, my dear, and we are not 
all led by the same road, That was certainly good 
advice of Mr. Tryan's you told me of last night, — 
that we should consult some one that may inter- 
fere for you with your husband; and I have been 
turning it over in my mind while I’ve been lying 
awake in the night. I think nobody will do so 
well as Mr. Benjamin Landor, for we must have a 
man that knows the law, and that Robert is rather 
afraid of. And perhaps he could bring about an 
agreement for you to live apart. Your husband ’s 
bound to maintain you, you know; and, if vou 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 121 


liked, we could move away from Milby and live 
somewhere else. ” 

“Oh, mother, we must do nothing yet; I must 
think about it a little longer. I have a different 
feeling this morning from what I had yesterday. 
Something seems to tell me that I must go back to 
Robert some time, — after a little while. I loved 
him once better than all the world, and I have 
never had any children to love. There were things 
in me that were wrong, and I should like to make 
up for them if I can.” 

“Well, my dear, I won’t persuade vou. Think 
of it a little longer. But something must be done 
soon. ” 

“How I wish I had my bonnet and shawl and 
black gown here!” said Janet, after a few min- 
utes’ silence. “I should like to go to Paddiford 
Church and hear Mr. Tryan. There would be no 
fear of my meeting Robert, for he never goes out 
on a Sunday morning.” 

“T’m afraid it would not do for me to go to the 
house and fetch your clothes,” said Mrs. Raynor. 

“Oh, no, no! I must stay quietly here while 
you two go to church. I will be Mrs. Pettifer’s 
maid, and get the dinner ready for her by the time 
she comes back. Dear good woman! She was so 
tender to me when she took me in, in the night, 
mother, and all the next day, when I couldn’t 
speak a word to her to thank her. ” 


CHAPTER XXI. 


THE servants at Dempster's felt some surprise when 
the morning, noon, and evening of Saturday had 
passed, and still their mistress did not re-appear. 

“It’s very odd,” said Kitty, the housemaid, as 
she trimmed her next week’s cap, while Betty, 
the middle-aged cook, looked on with folded arms. 
“ Do you think as Mrs. Raynor was ill, and sent for 
the missis afore we was up?” 

Ole said Bettye ats had! been =that; ched 
ha’ been back’ards an’ for’ards three or four times 
afore now; leastways, she ’d ha’ sent little Ann to 
let us know. ” 

“There’s summat up more nor usal between 
her an’ the master, that you may depend on,” said 
Kitty. “1 know those clothes as was lying i’ the 
drawing-room yesterday. when the company was 
come, meant summat. I should n't wonder if that 
was what they ’ve had a fresh row about. She's 
p raps gone away, an’s made up her mind not to 
come back again.” 

‘An’ 4’ the right gonst) too,*)said Betty. said 
ha’ overrun him long afore now, if it had been me. 
I wouldn't stan’ bein’ mauled as she is by no 
husband, not if he was the biggest lord i’ the land. 
It’s poor work bein’ a wife at that price: I’d 
sooner be a cook wi out perkises, an’ hev roast, 
an’ boil, an’ fry, an’ bake, all to mind at once. 
She may well do as she does. I know I’m glad 


JANETS REPENTANCE. 123 


enough of a drop o’ summat myself when I’m 
plagued. I feel very low, like, to-night; I think 
I shall put my beer i’ the saucepan an’ warm it.” 

“What a one you are for warmin’ your beer, 
Betty! Icouldn’t abide it, — nasty bitter stuff!” 

“It's fine talkin’; if you was a cook you'd 
know what belongs to bein’ a cook. It’s none so 
nice to hev a sinkin’ at your stomach, I can tell 
you. You wouldn't think so much o’ fine ribbins 
1’ your cap then. ” 

“Well, well, Betty, don’t be grumpy. Liza 
Thomson, as is at Phipps’s, said to me last Sunday, 
‘I wonder you ’ll stay at Dempster’s,’ she says, 
‘such goins-on as there is.’ But I says, * There's 
things to put up wi’ in ivery place, an’ you may 
change an’ change, an’ not better yourself when 
all’s said an’ done.’ Lors! why, Liza told me 
herself as Mrs. Phipps was as skinny as skinny 1° 
the kitchen, for all they keep so much company ; 
and as for follyers, she’s as cross as a turkey-cock 
if she finds ’em out. There’s nothin’ o that sort 
i’ the missis. How pretty she come an’ spoke to 
Job last Sunday! There isn’t a good-natur der 
woman i’ the world, that’s my belief — an’ han- 
some too. I al’ys think there ’s nobody looks half 
so well as the missis when she’s got her ‘air done 
nice. lLors! I wish I’d got long ’air like her, — 
my air’s a-comin’ off dreadful.” 

“There ’ll be fine work to-morrow, I expect,” 
said Betty, “when the master comes home, an’ 
Dawes a-swearin’ as he'll niver do a stroke 0’ 
work for him again. It'll be good fun if he sets 
the justice on him for cuttin’ him wi’ the whip; 
the master ‘ll p’raps get his comb cut for once in 
his life! ~ 


Al 


124 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


“Why, he was in a temper like a fi-end this 
morning,” said Kitty. “I dare say it was along 
o’ what had happened wi’ the missis. We shall 
hev a pretty house wi’ him if she doesn’t come 
back, — he ’11 want to be leatherin’ ws, I should n't 
wonder. He must hev somethin’ t’ ill-use when 
he’s in a passion. ” 

“ [Dditekscare hevdidm teleathersne,—-mownouere 
he was my husban’ ten times o’er; I’d pour hot 
drippin’ on him sooner. But the missis hasn't a 
sperrit like me. He’ll mek her come back, you ’ll 
see; he’1] come round her somehow. There's no 
likelihood of her coming back to-night, though; 
so I should think we might fasten the doors and 
go to bed when we like.” 

On Sunday morning, however, Kitty's mind 
became disturbed by more definite and alarming 
conjectures about her mistress. While Betty, en- 
couraged by the prospect of unwonted leisure, was 
sitting down to continue a letter which had long 
lain unfinished between the leaves of her Bible, 
Kitty came running into the kitchen, and said,— 

“Lor! Betty, I’m all of a tremble; you might 
knock me down wi’ a feather. I’ve just looked 
into the missis’s wardrobe, an’ there’s both her 
bonnets. She must ha’ gone wi’out her bonnet. 
An’ then I remember as her night-clothes was n't 
on the bed yesterday mornin’; I thought she’d 
put ’em away to be washed; but she hedn’t, for 
I’ve been lookin’. It’s my belief he’s murdered 
her, and shut her up i’ that closet as he keeps 
locked al’ys. He’s capible on’t.” 

“Lors ha’-massy! why, you’d better run to 
Mrs. Raynor’s an’ see if she’s there, arter all. 
It was p’raps all a lie.” 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. | 125 


Mrs. Raynor had returned home to give direc- 
tions to her little maiden, when Kitty, with the 
elaborate manifestation of alarm which servants 
delight in, rushed in without knocking, and, hold- 
ing her hands on her heart as if the consequences 
to that organ were likely to be very serious, said, — 

“If you please, ’m, is the missis here?” 

“No, Kitty; why are you come to ask?” 

“Because, ’m, she’s niver been at home since 
yesterday mornin’, since afore we was up; an’ we 
thought somethin’ must ha’ happened to her. ” 

“No, don’t be frightened, Kitty. Your mis- 
tress 1s quite safe; I know where she is. Is your 
master at home?” 

“No, ’m; he went out yesterday mornin’, an’ 
said he shouldn’t be back afore to-night.” 

“Well, Kitty, there ’s nothing the matter with 
your mistress. You needn’t say anything to any 
one about her being away from home. I shall call 
presently and fetch her gown and bonnet. She 
wants them to put on.” 

Kitty, perceiving there was a mystery she 
was not to inquire into, returned to Orchard 
Street, really glad to know that her mistress was 
safe, but disappointed nevertheless at being told 
that she was not to be frightened. She was soon 
followed by Mrs. Raynor in quest of the gown and 
bonnet. The good mother, on learning that Demp- 
ster was not at home, had at once thought that 
she could gratify Janet’s wish to go to Paddiford 
Church. 

“See, my dear,” she said, as she entered Mrs. 
Pettifer’s parlour; “I’ve brought you your black 
clothes. Robert’s not at home, and is not coming 
till this evening. I could n’t find your best black 


126 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


gown, but this will do. I wouldn’t bring any- 
thing else, you know; but there can’t be any 
objection to my fetching clothes to cover you. 
You can go to Paddiford Church now, if you like; 
and I will go with you.” 

“That’sa dear mother! Then we ’ll all three go 
together. Come and help me to get ready. Good 
little Mrs. Crewe! It will vex her sadly that I 
should go to hear Mr. Tryan. But I must kiss 
her, and make it up with her.” 

Many eyes were turned on Janet with a look of 
surprise as she walked up the aisle of Paddiford 
Church. She'felt a little tremor at the notice 
she knew she was exciting; but it was a strong 
satisfaction to her that she had been able at once 
to take a step that would let her neighbours know 
her change of feeling towards Mr. Tryan: she had 
left herself now no room for proud reluctance or 
weak hesitation. The walk through the sweet 
spring air had stimulated all her fresh hopes, all 
her yearning desires after purity, strength, and 
peace. She thought she should find a new mean- 
ing in the prayers this morning; her full heart, 
like an overflowing river, wanted those ready-made 
channels to pour itself into; and then she should 
hear Mr. Tryan again, and his words would fall on 
her like precious balm, as they had done last 
night. There was a liquid brightness in her eyes 
as they rested on the mere walls, the pews, the 
weavers and colliers in their Sunday clothes. 
The commonest things seemed to touch the spring 
of love within her, just as, when we are suddenly 
released from an acute absorbing bodily pain, our 
heart and senses leap out in new freedom; we 
think even the noise of streets harmonious, and 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. Tey) 


are ready to hug the tradesman who is wrapping 
up our change. A door had been opened in 
Janet's cold dark prison of self-despair, and the 
golden light of morning was pouring in its slant- 
ing beams through the blessed opening. There 
was sunlight in the world; there was a divine love 
caring for her; it had given her an earnest of good 
things; it had been preparing comfort for her in 
the very moment when she had thought herself 
most forsaken. 

Mr. Tryan might well rejoice when his eye 
rested on her as he entered his desk; but he re- 
joiced with trembling. He could not look at the 
sweet hopeful face without remembering its yes- 
terday’s look of agony ; and there was the possibility 
that that look might return. 

Janet's appearance at church was greeted not 
only by wondering eyes, but by kind hearts; and 
after the service several of Mr. Tryan’s hearers 
with whom she had been on cold terms of late, 
contrived to come up to her and take her by the 
hand. 

“Mother,” said Miss Linnet, “do let us go and 
speak to Mrs. Dempster. I’m sure there’s a great 
change in her mind towards Mr. Tryan. I no- 
ticed how eagerly she listened to the sermon, and 
she’s come with Mrs. Pettifer, you see. We ought 
to go and give her a welcome among us. ” 

“Why, my dear, we've never spoke friendly 
these five year. You know she’s been as haughty 
as anything since I quarrelled with her husband. 
However, let bygones be bygones: I’ve no grudge 
again’ the poor thing, more particular as she must 
ha’ flew in her husband’s face to come an’ hear 
Mr. Tryan. Yes, let us go an’ speak to her.” 


128 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


The friendly words and looks touched Janet a 
little too keenly, and Mrs. Pettifer wisely hurried 
her home by the least frequented road. When 
they reached home, a violent fit of weeping, fol- 
lowed by continuous lassitude, showed that the 
emotions of the morning had overstrained her 
nerves. She was suffering, too, from the absence 
of the long-accustomed stimulus which she had 
promised Mr. Tryan not to touch again. The poor 
thing was conscious of this, and dreaded her own 
weakness, as the victim of intermittent insanity 
dreads the oncoming of the old illusion. 

“Mother,” she whispered when Mrs. Raynor 
urged her to le down and rest all the afternoon, 
that she might be the better prepared to see Mr. 
Tryan in the evening, —“ mother, don’t let me 
have anything if I ask for it.” 

In the mother’s mind there was the same anx- 
iety, and in her it was mingled with another fear, 
—the fear lest Janet, in her present excited state of 
mind, should take some premature step in relation 
to her husband which might lead back to all the 
former troubles. The hint she had thrown out in the 
morning of her wish to return to him after a time 
showed a new eagerness for difficult duties that 
only made the long-saddened sober mother tremble. 

But as evening approached, Janet’s morning 
heroism all forsook her: her imagination, influ- 
enced by physical depression as well as by mental 
habits, was haunted by the vision of her husband's 
return home, and she began to shudder with the 
yesterday's dread. She heard him calling her, 
she saw him going to her mother’s to look for her, 
she felt sure he would find her out and burst in 
upon her. | 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 129 


“Pray, pray, don't leave me, don’t go to church, ” 
she said to Mrs. Pettifer. “ You and mother both 
stay with me till Mr. Tryan comes. ” 

At twenty minutes past six the church bells 
were ringing for the evening service, and soon the 
congregation was streaming along Orchard Street 
in the mellow sunset. The street opened towards 
the west. The red half-sunken sun shed a solemn 
splendour on the every-day houses, and crimsoned 
the windows of Dempster's projecting upper story. 

Suddenly a loud murmur arose and spread along 
the stream of church-goers, and one group after 
another paused and looked backward. At the far 
end of the street, men, accompanied by a miscel- 
laneous group of onlookers, were slowly carrying 
something, —a body stretched on a door. Slowly 
they passed along the middle of the street, lined 
all the way with awestruck faces, till they turned 
aside and paused in the red sunlight before Demp- 
ster’s door. 

It was Dempster’s body. No one knew whether 
he was alive or dead. 


VOLeil-z— 9 


CHAPTER XXII. 


It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that 
“there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that 
repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons 
that need no repentance.” And certain ingenious 
philosophers of our own day must surely take 
offence at a joy so entirely out of correspondence 
with arithmetical proportion. Buta heart that has 
been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for 
the woes of another — that has “learned pity 
through suffering ” —is lkely to find very imper- 
fect satisfaction in the “ balance of happiness, ” 
“doctrine of compensations,” and other short and 
easy methods of obtaining thorough complacency 
in the presence of pain; and for such a heart that 
saying will not be altogether dark. The emotions, 
I have observed, are but. slightly influenced by 
arithmetical considerations: the mother, when her 
sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from 
her one after another, and she is hanging over her 
last dead babe, finds small consolation in the fact 
that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a neces- 
sary average, and that a thousand other babes 
brought into the world at the same time are doing 
well, and are likely to live; and if you stood be- 
side that mother — if you knew her pang and 
shared it —it is probable you would be equally 
unable to see a ground of complacency in statistics. 
Doubtless a complacency resting on that basis is 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 131 


highly rational; but emotion, I fear, is obstinately 
irrational: it insists on caring for individuals; 
it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative 
view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen 
happy lives are a set-off against twelve miserable 
lives, which leaves a clear balance on the side of 
satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of 
feeling, and one must be a great philosopher to 
have got quite clear of. all that, and to have 
emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in 
which it is evident that individuals really exist 
for no other purpose than that abstractions may be 
drawn from them, — abstractions that may rise 
from heaps of ruined lives like the sweet savour of 
a sacrifice in the nostrils of philosophers, and of a 
philosophic Deity. And so it comes to pass that 
for the man who knows sympathy because he has 
known sorrow, that old, old saying about the joy 
of angels over the repentant sinner outweighing 
their joy over the ninety-nine just has a meaning 
which does not jar with the language of his own 
heart. It only tells him that for angels too there 
is a transcendent value in human pain, which re- 
fuses to be settled by equations; that the eyes of 
angels too are turned away from the serene happi- 
ness of the righteous to bend with yearning pity 
on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert 
where no water is; that for angels too the misery 
of one casts so tremendous a shadow as to eclipse 
the bliss of ninety-nine. 

Mr. Tryan had gone through the initiation of 
suffering: it is no wonder, then, that Janet’s res- 
toration was the work that lay nearest his heart: 
and that, weary as he was in body when he entered 
the vestry after the evening service, he was im- 


132 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


patient to fulfil the promise of seeing her. His 
experience enabled him to divine — what was the 
fact — that the hopefulness of the morning would 
be followed by a return of depression and discour- 
agement; and his sense of the inward and outward 
difficulties in the way of her restoration was so 
keen that he could only find relief from the fore- 
boding it excited by lifting up his heart in prayer. 
There are unseen elements which often frustrate our 
wisest calculations, — which raise up the sufferer 
from the edge of the grave, contradicting the 
prophecies of the clear-sighted physician, and ful- 
filling the blind clinging hopes of affection; such 
unseen elements Mr. Tryan called the Divine 
Will, and filled up the margin of ignorance which 
surrounds all our knowledge with the feelings of 
trust and resignation. Perhaps the profoundest 
philosophy could hardly fill it up better. 

His mind was occupied in this way as he was 
absently taking off his gown, when Mr. Landor 
startled him by entering the vestry and asking 
abruptly, — 

“ Have you heard the news about Dempster ? * 

“No,” said Mr. Tryan, anxiously ; “ what is it?” 

“He has been thrown out of his gig in the 
Bridge Way, and he was taken up for dead. They 
were carrying him home as we were coming to 
church, and I stayed behind to see what I could 
do. I went in to speak to Mrs. Dempster, and 
prepare her a little, but she was not at home. 
Dempster is not dead, however; he was stunned 
with the fall. Pilgrim came in a few minutes, 
and he says the right leg is broken in two places. 
It’s likely to be a terrible case, with his state of 
body. It seems he was more drunk than usual, 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 38 


and they say he came along the Bridge Way flogging 
his horse like a madman, till at last it gave a sud- 
den wheel and he was pitched out. The servants 
said they didn’t know where Mrs. Dempster was: 
she had been away from home since yesterday 
morning; but Mrs. Raynor knew. ” 

“I know where she is,” said Mr. Tryan; “ but 
I think it will be better for her not to be told of 
this just yet.” 

“Ah, that was what Pilgrim said, and so I 
didn’t go round to Mrs. Raynor’s. He said it 
would be all the better if Mrs. Dempster could be 
kept out of the house for the present. Do you 
know if anything new has happened between 
Dempster and his wife lately? I was surprised 
to hear of her being at Paddiford Church this 
morning. ” 

“Yes, something has happened; but I believe 
she is anxious that the particulars of his behaviour 
towards her should not be known. She is at Mrs. 
Pettifer’s, — there is no reason for concealing that, 
since what has happened to her husband; and 
yesterday, when she was in very deep trouble, she 
sent for me. Iwas very thankful she did so; I 
believe a great change of feeling has begun in her. 
But she is at present in that excitable state of 
mind, she has been shaken by so many painful 
emotions during the last two days, that I think it 
would be better, for this evening at least, to guard 
her from a new shock, if possible. But I am 
going now to call upon her, and I shall see how 
she. is.” 

“Mr. Tryan,” said Mr. Jerome, who had entered 
during the dialogue, and had been standing by, 
listening with a distressed face, “I shall take it 


134 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


asa favour if you ll let me know if iver there's 
anything I can do for Mrs. Dempster. Eh, dear, 
what.a world this is! I think I see ’em fifteen 
years ago, — as happy a young couple as iver was; 
and. now, -what itessallmcomento. Oleavaseinea 
hurry, like, to punish Dempster for pessecutin’ ; 
but there was a stronger hand at work nor mine.” 

“Yes, Mr. Jerome; but don’t let us rejoice in 
punishment, even when the hand of God alone 
inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches 
just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything 
but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger 
swallowed by the waves?” 

“Right, right, Mr. Tryan. I’m over hot and 
hasty, that Lam. But I beg on you to tell Mrs. 
Dempster —I mean, in course, when you’ve an 
opportunity — tell her she’s a friend at the White 
House as she may send for any hour o’ the day. ” 

“Yes; I shall have an opportunity, I dare say, 
and I will remember your wish. I think,” con- 
tinued Mr. Tryan, turning to Mr. Landor, “I had 
better see Mr. Pilgrim on my way, and learn what 
is exactly the state of things by this time. What 
do you think?” 

“By all means: if Mrs. Dempster is to know, 
there ’s no one can break the news to her so well 
as you. I[’ll walk with you to Dempster’s door. 
slp daresay sy hiloriinesicm incre Still a COomemniT 
Jerome, you’ve got to go our way too, to fetch 
your horse.” 

Mr. Pilgrim was in the passage giving some 
directions to his assistant, when, to his surprise, 
he saw Mr. Tryan enter. They shook hands; for 
Mr. Pilgrim, never having joined the party of the 
Anti-Tryanites, had no ground for resisting the 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 135 


growing conviction that the Evangelical curate 
was really a good fellow, though he was a fool for 
not taking better care of himself. 

“Why, I didn’t expect to see you in your old 
enemy’s quarters,” he said to Mr. Tryan. “ How- 
ever, it will be a good while before poor Dempster 
shows any fight again.” 

“T came on Mrs. Dempster’s account,” said Mr. 
Tryan. “She is staying at Mrs. Pettifer's; she 
has had a great shock from some severe domestic 
trouble lately, and I think it will be wise to defer 
telling her of this dreadful event for a short time.” 

“Why, what has been up, eh?” said Mr. Pil- 
erim, whose curiosity was at once awakened. 
“She used to be no friend of yours. Has there 
been some split between them? It’s a new thing 
for her to turn round on him.” 

“Oh, merely an exaggeration of scenes that must 
often have happened before. But the question 
now is, whether you think there is any immediate 
danger of her husband's death; for in that case, I 
think, from what I have observed of ber feelings, 
she would be pained afterwards to have been kept 
in ignorance. ” 

“Well, there’s no telling in these cases, you 
know. I don’t apprehend speedy death, and it is 
not absolutely impossible that we may bring him 
round again. At present he’s in a state of apo- 
plectic stupor; but if that subsides, delirium is 
almost sure to supervene, and we shall have some 
painful scenes. It’s one of those complicated 
cases in which the delirium is likely to be of the 
worst kind, — meningitis and delirium tremens 
together, — and we may havea good deal of trouble 
with him. If Mrs. Dempster were told, I should 


136 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


say it would be desirable to persuade her to remain 
out of the house at present. She could do no good, 
you know. I've got nurses, ” 

“Thank you,” said Mr, Tryan. “That is what 
[ wanted to know. Good-by. ” 

When Mrs. Pettifer opened the door for Mr. 
Tryan, he told her in a few words what had hap- 
pened, and begged her to take an opportunity of 
letting Mrs. Raynor know, that they might, if 
possible, concur in preventing a premature or 
sudden disclosure of the event to Janet. 

“Poor thing!” said Mrs. Pettifer. “She's not 
fit to hear any bad news; she’s very low this 
evening, — worn out with feeling; and she’s not 
had anything to keep her up, as she’s been used 
to. She seems frightened at the thought of being 
tempted to take it.” 

“Thank God for it; that fear is her greatest 
security. ” 

When Mr. Tryan entered the parlour this time, 
Janet was again awaiting him eagerly, and her 
pale sad face was lighted up with a smile as she 
rose to meet him. But the next moment she said, 
with a look of anxiety, — 

“ How very ill and tired you look! You have 
been working so hard all day, and yet you are 
come to talk tome. Oh, you are wearing yourself 
out. I must go and ask Mrs. Pettifer to come and 
make you have some supper. But this is my 
mother; you have not seen her before, I think. ” 

While Mr. Tryan was speaking to Mrs. Raynor, 
Janet hurried out; and he, seeing that this good- 
natured thoughtfulness on his behalf would help 
to counteract her depression, was not inclined to 
oppose her wish, but accepted the supper Mrs. 


JANETS REPENTANCE. 137 


Pettifer offered him, quietly talking the while 
about a clothing-club he was going to establish in 
Paddiford, and the want of provident habits among 
the poor. 

Presently, however, Mrs Raynor said she must 
go home for an hour, to see how her little maiden 
was going on, and Mrs, Pettifer left the room with 
her to take the opportunity of telling her what 
had happened to Dempster. When Janet was left 
alone with Mr. Tryan, she said, — 

“I feel so uncertain what to do about my hus- 
band. I am go weak, —my feelings change so 
from hour to hour. This morning when I felt so 
hopeful and happy, I thought I should like to go 
back to him, and try to make up for what has 
been wrong in me. I thought, now God would 
help me, and I should have you to teach and ad- 
vise me, and I could bear the troubles that would 
come. But since then—all this afternoon and 
evening —I have had the same feelings I used to 
have, the same dread of his anger and cruelty; and 
it seems to me as if I should never be able to bear 
it without falling into the same sins and doing 
just what I did before. Yet, if it were settled 
that I should live apart from him, I know it would 
always be a load on my mind that I had shut 
inyself out from going back to him. It seems a 
dreadful thing in life, when any one has been so 
near to one as a husband for fifteen years, to part 
and be nothing to each other any more. Surely 
that is a very strong tie, and I feel as if my duty 
can never lie quite away from it. It is very diffi- 
cult to know what to do: what ought I to do?” 

“I think it will be well not to take any decisive 
step yet. Wait until your mind is calmer. You 


138 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


might remain with your mother for a little while. 
I think you have no real ground for fearing any 
annoyance from your husband at present; he has 
put himself too much in the wrong ; he will very 
likely leave you unmolested for some time. Dis- 
miss this difficult question from your mind just 
now, if you can. Every new day may bring you 
new grounds for decision, and what is most need- 
ful for your health of mind is repose from that 
haunting anxiety about the future which has been 
preying on you. Cast yourself on God, and trust 
that he will direct you; he will make your duty 
clear to you, if you wait submissively on him. i 

eeYes pl awilh wait a little, as you tell me. I 
will go to my mother’s to-morrow, and pray to be 
guided rightly. You will pray for me too. ‘ 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


THE next morning Janet was so much calmer, and 
at breakfast spoke so decidedly of going to her 
mother's, that Mrs. Pettifer and Mrs, Raynor 
agreed it would be wise to let her know by de- 
grees what had befallen her husband, since as 
soon as she went out there would be danger of her 
meeting some one who would betray the fact. But 
Mrs. Raynor thought it would be well first to call 
at Dempster’s and ascertain how he was; so she 
Salduto.. ance, —— 

“My dear, I'l] go home first, and see to things, 
and get your room ready. You needn't come yet, 
you know. I shall be back again in an hour or 
so, and we can go together. ” 

“ Oh, no,” said Mrs. Pettifer. “Stay with me 
till evening. I shall be lost without you. You 
needn't go till quite evening.” 

Janet had dipped into the “Life of Henry 
Martyn,” which Mrs. Pettifer had from the Paddi- 
ford Lending Library; and her interest was so 
arrested by that pathetic missionary story that 
she readily acquiesced in both propositions, and 
Mrs. Raynor set out. 

She had been gone more than an hour, and it 
was nearly twelve o’clock, when Janet put down 
her book; and after sitting meditatively for some 
minutes with her eyes unconsciously fixed on the 
opposite wall, she rose, went to her bedroom, and, 


140 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


hastily putting on her bonnet and shawl, came 
down to Mrs. Pettifer, who was busy in the 
kitchen. 

“Mrs. Pettifer,” she said, ‘tell mother, when 
she comes back, I’m gone to see what has become 
of those poor Lakins in Butcher Lane. I know 
they ’re half starving, and I’ve neglected them so, 
lately. And then, I think, I'll go on to Mrs. 
Crewe. I want to see the dear little woman, 
and tell her myself about my going to hear Mr. 
Tryan. She won’t feel it half so much if I tell 
her myself.” 

“Won't you wait till your mother comes, or 
put it off till to-morrow?” said Mrs. Pettifer, 
alarmed. “ You'll hardly be back in time for 
dinner, if you get talking to Mrs. Crewe. And 
you ‘ll have to pass by your husband's, you know ; 
and yesterday you were so afraid of seeing him. ” 

“Oh, Robert will be shut up at the office now, 
if he’s not gone out of the town. I must go—l 
feel I must be doing something for some one — 
not be a mere useless log any longer. I’ve been 
reading about that wonderful Henry Martyn; he’s 
just like Mr. Tryan, — wearing himself out for 
other people, and I sit thinking of nothing but 
myself. I must go. Good-by. I shall be back 
soon. ” 

She ran off before Mrs. Pettifer could utter 
another word of dissuasion, leaving the good 
woman in considerable anxiety lest this new im- 
pulse of Janet's should frustrate all precautions to 
save her from a sudden shock. 

Janet, having paid her visit in Butcher Lane, 
turned again into Orchard Street on her way to 
Mrs. Crewe’s, and was thinking rather sadly that 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 141 


her mother’s economical housekeeping would leave 
no abundant surplus to be sent to the hungry 
Lakins, when she saw Mr. Pilgrim in advance of 
her on the other side of the street. He was walking 
at a rapid pace; and when he reached Dempster’s 
door, he turned and entered without knocking. 

Janet was startled. Mr. Pilgrim would never 
enter in that way unless there were some one very 
ill in the house. It was her husband; she felt 
certain of it at once. Something had happened to 
him. Without a moment’s pause she ran across 
the street, opened the door, and entered. There 
was no one in the passage. The dining-room door 
was wide open,— no one was there. Mr. Pilgrim, 
then, was already upstairs. She rushed up at 
once to Dempster’s room, — her own room. The 
door was open, and she paused in pale horror at the 
sight before her, which seemed to stand out only 
with the more appalling distinctness because the 
noonday light was darkened to twilight in the 
chamber. 

Two strong nurses were using their utmost force 
to hold Dempster in bed, while the medical assist- 
ant was applying a sponge to his head, and Mr. 
Pilgrim was busy adjusting some apparatus in the 
background. Dempster’s face was purple and 
swollen, his eyes dilated, and fixed with a look 
of dire terror on something he seemed to see ap- 
proaching him from the iron closet. He trembled 
violently, and struggled as if to jump out of bed. 

“Let me go, let me go,” he said in a loud, 
hoarse whisper; “she’s coming... she’s cold 
. . . She’s dead... she’ll strangle me with her 
black hair. Ah!” he shrieked aloud, “ her hair is 
all serpents .... they ’re black serpents. . - 


142 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, 


they hiss... they hissis*.).)sletime.go 27 elet 
me go... she wants to drag me with her cold 
arms... her arms are serpents... they are 
great white serpents . . . they ‘ll twine round me 


. she wants to drag me into the cold water 
, herbosomais sco] dae Gatcap loc kg armel 
is all serpents — ” 

“No, Robert,” Janet cried, in tones of yearning 
pity, rushing to the side of the bed, and stretching 
out her arms towards him, “no, here is Janet. 
She is not dead, —she forgives you.” 

Dempster’s maddened senses seemed to receive 
some new impression from her appearance. The 
terror gave way to rage. 

“Ha! you sneaking hypocrite!” he burst out 
in a grating voice, “you threaten me... you 
mean to have your revenge on me, do you? Do 
your worst! I’ve got the law on my side... 
I know the law... I’ll hunt you down hike a 
hare... proveit . .. prove that I was tampered 
with . . . provethatI took the money . . . prove 
it... youcan prove nothing . . . you damned 
psalm-singing maggots! I’ll make a fire under 
you, and smoke off the whole pack of you... 
I’ll sweep you up. . . I'll grind you to powder 


. , Small powder. . . [here his voice dropped 
to a low tone of shuddering disgust] . . . powder 
on the bed-clothes . . . runningabout.. . black 
lice. . . they are coming in swarms. . . Janet! 


come and take them away... curse you! why 
don’t you come? Janet!” 

Poor Janet was kneeling by the bed with her 
face buried in her hands. She almost wished her 
worst moment back again rather than this. It 
seemed as if her husband was already imprisoned 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 143 


in misery, and she could not reach him, — his ear 
deaf forever to the sounds of love and forgiveness. 
His sins had made a hard crust round his soul; 
her pitying voice could not pierce it. 

~ Not there, isn’t she?” he went on in a defiant 
tone. “Why do you ask me where she is? I'll 
have every drop of yellow blood out of your veins 
if you come questioning me. Your blood is yellow 

. » Inyourpurse . . . running out of-your purse. 
. . . What! you’re changing it into toads, are 
you? They're crawling... they’re flying... 
they ’re flying about my head . . . the toads are 
flying about. Ostler! ostler! bring out my gig 

. bring it out, you lazy beast . . . ha! you'll 
follow me, will you?... you’ll fly about my 
head... . you’ve got fiery tongues... Ostler! 
curse you! why don’t youcome? Janet! come and 
take the toads away . . . Janet!” 

This last time he uttered her name with such a 
shriek of terror that. Janet involuntarily started up 
from her knees, and stood as if petrified by the 
horrible vibration. Dempster stared wildly in 
silence for some moments; then he spoke again in 
a hoarse whisper, — 

eebend 2. sr ismsshnesdeadi’ She did’ it,, then. 
She buried herself in the iron chest . . . she left 
her clothes out, though . .. she isn’t dead... 
why do you pretend she’s dead?. . . she’s com- 
ing. .. she’s coming out of theiron closet... 
there are the black serpents... stop her... 
let me go... stop her. . . she wants to drag 
me away into the cold black water . . . her bosom 
is black... it is all serpents ... . they are get- 
ting longer... the great white serpents are 
getting longer — ” 


144 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, 


Here Mr. Pilgrim came forward with the appara- 
tus to bind him; but Dempster’s struggles became 
more and more violent. “ Ostler! ostler!” he 
shouted, “bring out the gig... give me the 
whip!” and bursting loose from the strong hands 
that held him, he began to flog the bed-clothes 
furiously with his right arm. 

“Get along, you lame brute! —sc—sc —sc! 
that’s it! there you go! They think they ‘ve out- 
witted me, do they? The sneaking idiots! Ill 
be up with them by and by. I’ll make them say 
the ‘Lord's Prayers backwards 4. ;21i spenper 
them so that the devil shall eat them raw... 
sc — sc —sc — we shall see who ’ll be the winner 
yet. . . getalong, youdamned limping beast . . . 
I¥l lave our backsopcneess te alleys 

He raised himself with a stronger effort than 
ever to flog the bed-clothes, and fell back in con- 
vulsions. Janet gave a scream, and sank on her 
knees again. She thought he was dead. 

As soon as Mr. Pilgrim was able to give hera 
moment’s attention, he came to her, and, taking 
her by the arm, attempted to draw her gently out 
of the room. 

“Now, my dear Mrs. Dempster, let me persuade 
you not to remain in the room at present. We 
shall soon relieve these symptoms, I hope; it is 
nothing but the delirium that ordinarily attends 
such cases. ” 

“Oh, what is the matter? what brought it on?” 

“He fell out of the gig; the right leg is broken. 
It is a terrible accident, and I don’t disguise that 
there is considerable danger attending it, owing to 
the state of the brain. But Mr. Dempster has a 
strong constitution, you know; in a few days these 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 145 


Symptoms may be allayed, and he may do well. 
Let me beg of you to keep out of the room at pres- 
ent: you can do no good until Mr. Dempster is 
better, and able to know you. But you ought not 
to be alone; let me advise you to have Mrs. 
Raynor with you. ” 

“ Yes, I will send for mother. But you must 
not object to my being in the room. I shall be 
very quiet’ now, only just at first the shock was so 
great; | knew nothing about it. I can help the 
nurses a great deal; I can put the cold things to 
his head. He may be sensible for a moment and 
know me. Pray do not say any more against it: 
my heart is set on being with him.” 

Mr. Pilgrim gave way; and Janet, having sent 
for her mother and put off her bonnet and shawl, 
returned to take her place by the side of her hus- 
band's bed. 


VOL. 11. — 10 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


Day after day, with only short intervals of rest, 
Janet kept her place in that sad chamber. No 
wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so 
often been a refuge from the tossings of intellec- 
tual doubt, — a place of repose for the worn and 
wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all 
creeds and all philosophies ‘are at one; here, at 
least, the conscience will not be dogged by doubt, 
the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse 
theory ; here you may begin to act without settling 
one preliminary question. To moisten the suffer- 
er’s parched lips through the long night-watches, 
to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless 
limbs, to divine the want that can find no utter- 
ance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or 
beseeching glance of the eye, — these are offices 
that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no 
assent to propositions, no weighing of conse- 
quences. Within the four walls where the stir 
and glare of the world are shut out, and every 
voice is subdued, — where a human being lies pros- 
trate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow, 
the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its 
utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot 
confuse it; theory cannot pervert it; passion, awed 
into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it. 
As we bend over the sick-bed, all the forces of our 
nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience, 
and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 147 


drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be 
wisdom, and our clamorous selfish desires. This 
blessing of serene freedom from the importunities 
of opinion lies in all simple direct acts of mercy, 
and is one source of that sweet calm which is often 
felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when 
the duties there are of a hard and terrible kind. 
Something of that benign result was felt by 
Janet during her tendance in her husband’s cham- 
ber. When the first heart-piercing hours were over 
— when her horror at his delirium was no longer 
fresh — she began to be conscious of her relief 
from the burden of decision as to her future course. 
The question that agitated her about returning to 
her husband had been solved in a moment; and 
this illness, after all, might be the herald of an- 
other blessing, just as that dreadful midnight when 
she stood an outcast in cold and darkness had been 
followed by the dawn of anew hope. Robert would 
get better; this illness might alter him; he would 
be a long time feeble, needing help, walking with a 
crutch perhaps She would wait on him with such 
tenderness, such all-forgiving love, that the old 
harshness and cruelty must melt away forever 
under the heart-sunshine she would pour around 
him. Her bosom heaved at the thought, and deli- 
cious tears fell. Janet’s was a nature in which 
hatred and revenge could find no place; the long 
bitter years drew half their bitterness from her 
ever living remembrance of the too short years 
of love that went before; and the thought that 
her husband would ever put her hand to his 
lips again, and recall the days when they sat on 
the grass together, and he laid scarlet poppies on 
her black hair, and called her his gypsy queen, 


148 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


seemed to send a tide of loving oblivion over all 
the harsh and stony space they had traversed 
since. The Divine Love that had already shone 
upon her would be with her; she would lift up 
her soul continually for help; Mr. Tryan, she 
knew, would pray for her. If she felt herself 
failing, she would confess it to him at once; if 
her feet began to slip, there was that stay for her 
to cling to. Oh, she could never be drawn back 
into that cold damp vault of sin and despair 
again; she had felt the morning sun, she had 
tasted the sweet pure air of trust and penitence 
and submission. 

These were the thoughts passing through Janet's 
mind as she hovered about her husband’s bed, and 
these were the hopes she poured out to Mr. Tryan 
when he called to see her. It was so evident that 
they were strengthening her in her new struggle, — 
they shed such a glow of calm enthusiasm over her 
face as she spoke of them, that Mr. Tryan could not 
bear to throw on them the chill of premonitory 
doubts, though a previous conversation he had had 
with Mr. Pilgrim had convinced him that there 
was not the faintest probability of Dempster’s re- 
covery. Poor Janet did not know the significance 
of the changing symptoms, and when, after the 
lapse of a week, the delirium began to lose some of 
its violence, and to be interrupted by longer and 
longer intervals of stupor, she tried to think that 
these might be steps on the way to recovery, and 
she shrank from questioning Mr. Pilgrim, lest he 
should confirm the fears that began to get pre- 
dominance in her mind. But before many days 
were past, he thought it mght not to allow her to 
blind herself any longer. One day —it was just 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. Tey RAO 


about noon, when bad news always seems most 
sickening — he led her from her husband’s chamber 
into the opposite drawing-room, where Mrs. Raynor 
was sitting, and said to her, in that low tone of 
sympathetic feeling which sometimes gave a sudden 
air of gentleness to this rough man, — 

“My dear Mrs. Dempster, it is right in these 
cases, you know, to be prepared for the worst. I 
think I shall be saving you pain by preventing 
you from entertaining any false hopes, and Mr. 
Dempster’s state is now such that I fear we must 
consider recovery impossible. The affection of the 
brain might not have been hopeless, but, you see, 
there is a terrible complication; and I am grieved 
to say the broken limb is mortifying.” 

Janet listened with a sinking heart. That future 
of love and forgiveness would never come, then: he 
was going out of her sight forever, where her pity 
could never reach him. She turned cold, and 
trembled. 

“ But do you think he will die,” she said, “ with- 
out ever coming to himself, without ever knowing 
me 

“One cannot say that with certainty. It is not 
impossible that the cerebral oppression may sub- 
side, and that he may become conscious. If there 
is anything you would wish to be said or done in 
that case, it would be well to be prepared. I should 
think,” Mr. Pilgrim continued, turning to Mrs. Ray- 
nor, “Mr. Dempster’s affairs are likely to be in 
order, — his will is —” 

“Oh, I would n’t have him troubled about those 
things,” interrupted Janet; “he-has no relations but 
quite distant ones,—no one but me. I wouldn't 
take up the time with that. I only want to—” 


150 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


She was unable to finish; she felt her sobs rising, 
and left the room. “O God,” she said inwardly, “1s 
not Thy love greater than mine? Have mercy on 
him! have mercy on him!” 

This happened on Wednesday, ten days after the 
fatal accident. By the following Sunday, Dempster 
was in a state of rapidly increasing prostration; and 
when Mr. Pilgrim, who, in turn with his assistant, 
had slept in the house from the beginning, came 1n, 
about half-past ten, as usual, he scarcely believed 
that the feebly struggling life would last out till 
morning. For the last few days he had been ad- 
ministering stimulants to relieve the exhaustion 
which had succeeded the alternations of delirium 
and stupor. This slight office was all that now 
remained to be done for the patient; so at eleven 
o’clock Mr. Pilgrim went to bed, having given 
directions to the nurse, and desired her to call him 
if any change took place, or if Mrs. Dempster 
desired his presence. 

Janet could not be persuaded to leave the room. 
She was yearning and watching for a moment in 
which her husband’s eyes would rest consciously 
upon her, and he would know that she had forgiven 
him. 

How changed he was since that terrible Monday, 
nearly a fortnight ago! He lay motionless, but for 
the irregular breathing that stirred his broad chest 
and thick muscular neck. His features were no 
longer purple and swollen; they were pale, sunken, 
and haggard. A cold perspiration stood in beads 
on the protuberant forehead, and on the wasted 
hands stretched motionless on the bed-clothes. It 
was better to see the hands so, than convulsively 
picking the air, as they had been a week ago. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. ISI 


Janet sat on the edge of the bed through the 
Jong hours of candle-light, watching the uncon- 
scious half-closed eyes, wiping the perspiration 
from the brow and cheeks, and keeping her left 
hand on the cold unanswering right hand that lay 
beside her on the bed-clothes. She was almost as 
pale as her dying husband, and there were dark 
lines under her eyes, for this was the third night 
since she had taken off her clothes; but the eager 
straining gaze of her dark eyes, and the acute sensi- 
bility that lay in every line about her mouth, made 
a strange contrast with the blank unconsciousness 
and emaciated animalism of the face she was 
watching, 

There was profound stillness in the house. She 
heard no sound but her husband’s breathing and 
the ticking of the watch on the mantelpiece. The 
candle, placed high up, shed a soft light down on 
the one object she cared to see. There was a smell 
of brandy in the room ; it was given to her husband 
from time to time; but this smell, which at first 
had produced in her a faint shuddering sensation, 
was now becoming indifferent to her: she did not 
even perceive it; she was too unconscious of herself 
to feel either temptations or accusations. She only 
felt that the husband of her youth was dying; far, 
far out of her reach, as if she were standing help- 
less on the shore, while he was sinking in the black 
storm-waves; she only yearned for one moment in 
which she might satisfy the deep forgiving pity of 
her soul by one look of love, one word of tenderness. 

Her sensations and thoughts were so persistent 
that she could not measure the hours, and it was a 
surprise to her when the nurse put out the candle, 
and let in the faint morning light. Mrs. Raynor, 


152 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


anxious about Janet, was already up, and now 
brought in some fresh coffee for her; and Mr. 
Pilgrim, having awaked, had hurried on his clothes, 
and was come in to see how Dempster was. 

This change from candle-light to morning, this 
recommencement of the same round of things that 
had happened yesterday, was a discouragement 
rather than a relief to Janet. She was more con- 
scious of her chill weariness; the new light thrown 
on her husband’s face seemed to reveal the still 
work that death had been doing through the night; 
she felt her last lingering hope that he would ever 
know her again forsake her. 

But now Mr. Pilgrim, having felt the pulse, was 
putting some brandy in a tea-spoon between Demp- 
ster’s lips; the brandy went down, and his breath- 
ing became freer. Janet noticed the change, and 
her heart beat faster as she leaned forward to watch 
him. Suddenly aslight movement, like the passing 
away of a shadow, was visible in his face, and he 
opened his eyes full on Janet. 

It was almost like meeting him again on the 
resurrection morning, after the night of the grave. 

“Robert, do you know me ?” 

He kept his eyes fixed on her, and there was a 
faintly perceptible motion of the lips, as if he 
wanted to speak. 

But the moment of speech was forever gone, — 
the moment for asking pardon of her, if he wanted 
to ask it. Could he read the full forgiveness that 
was written in her eyes? She never knew; for, 
as she was bending to kiss him, the thick veil of 
death fell between them, and her lips touched a 
corpse. 


CHAPTER XXyV. 


THE faces looked very hard and unmoved that sur- 
rounded Dempster’s grave, while old Mr. Crewe read 
the burial-service in his low, broken voice. The 
pall-bearers were such men as Mr. Pittman, Mr. 
Lowme, and Mr. Budd, — men whom Dempster had 
called his friends while he was in life; and worldly 
faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They 
have the same effect of grating incongruity as the 
sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence 
of night. 

The one face that had sorrow in it was covered 
by a thick crape veil, and the sorrow was suppressed 
and silent. No one knew how deep it was; for the 
thought in most of her neighbours’ minds was that 
Mrs. Dempster could hardly have had better fortune 
than to lose a bad husband who had left her the com- 
pensation of a good income. They found it difficult 
to conceive that her husband’s death could be felt 
by her otherwise than as a deliverance. The person 
who was most thoroughly convinced that Janet’s 
grief was deep and real was Mr. Pilgrim, who in 
general was not at all weakly given to a belief in 
disinterested feeling. 

“That woman has a tender heart,’ he was fre- 
quently heard to observe in his morning rounds 
about this time. “I used to think there was a great 
deal of palaver in her, but you may depend upon it 
there’s no pretence about her. If he’d been the 
kindest husband in the world, she could n’t have felt 


154 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


more. There ’s a great deal of good in Mrs. Demp- 
ster, —a great deal of good.” 

“ T always said so,’ was Mrs. Lowme’s reply, when 
he made the observation to her; “she was always 
so very full of pretty attentions to me when I was 
ill, But they tell me now she’s turned Tryanite ; 
if that’s it, we sha’n’t agree again. It’s very incon- 
sistent in her, I think, turning round in that way, 
after being the foremost to laugh at the Tryanite 
cant, and especially in a woman of her habits; she 
should cure herself of them before she pretends to 
be over-religious.” 

“Well, I think she means to cure herself, do you 
_ know,” said Mr. Pilgrim, whose good-will towards 
Janet was just now quite above that temperate point 
at which he could indulge his feminine patients with 
a little judicious detraction. “I feel sure she has 
not taken any stimulants all through her husband’s 
illness; and she has been constantly in the way of 
them. I can see she sometimes suffers a good deal 
of depression for want of them, — it shows all the 
more resolution in her. Those cures are rare; but 
I’ve known them happen sometimes with people of 
strong will.” 

Mrs. Lowme took an opportunity of retailing Mr. 
Pilgrim’s conversation to Mrs. Phipps, who, as a vic- 
tim of Pratt and plethora, could rarely enjoy that 
pleasure at first hand. Mrs. Phipps was a woman 
of decided opinions, though of wheezy utterance. 

“For my part,” she remarked, “I’m glad to hear 
there ’s any likelihood of improvement in Mrs Demp- 
ster, but I think the way things have turned out 
seems to show that she was more to blame than people 
thought she was; else why should she feel so much 
about her husband? And Dempster, I understand, has 


JANES REPENTANCE. 155 


left his wife pretty nearly all his property to do as 
she likes with; that isn’t behaving like such a very 
bad husband. I don’t believe Mrs. Dempster can 
have had so much provocation as they pretended. 
I’ve known husbands who’ve laid plans for tor- 
menting their wives when they ’re underground, — 
tying up their money and hindering them from 
marrying again. Not that ZI should ever wish to 
marry again; I think one husband in one’s life is 
enough in all conscience,” — here she threw a 
fierce glance at the amiable Mr. Phipps, who was 
innocently delighting himself with the facetie in 
the “Rotherby Guardian,” and thinking the editor 
must be a droll fellow, — “but it’s aggravating to 
be tied up in that way. Why, they say Mrs. Demp- 
ster will have as good as six hundred a-year at least. 
A fine thing for her, that was a poor girl without a 
farthing to her fortune It’s well if she doesn't 
make ducks and drakes of it somehow.” 

Mrs. Phipps’s view of Janet, however, was far 
ftom being the prevalent one in Milby. Even 
neighbours who had no strong personal interest in 
her could hardly see the noble-looking woman in 
her widow’s dress, with a sad sweet gravity in her 
face, and not be touched with fresh admiration 
for her, — and not feel, at least vaguely, that she 
had entered on a new life in which it was a sort of 
desecration to allude to the painful past. And the 
old friends who had a real regard for her, but whose 
cordiality had been repelled or chilled of late years, 
now came round her with hearty demonstrations of 
affection. Mr. Jerome felt that his happiness had 
a substantial addition now he could once more call 
on that “nice little woman Mrs. Dempster,” and 
think of her with rejoicing instead of sorrow. The 


156 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


Pratts lost no time in returning to the footing of old- 
established friendship with Janet and her mother ; 
and Miss Pratt felt it incumbent on her, on all suit- 
able occasions, to deliver a very emphatic approval 
of the remarkable strength of mind she understood 
Mrs. Dempster to be evhvntiie. The Miss Linnets 
were eager to meet Mr. Tryan’s wishes by greeting 
Janet as one who was likely to be a sister in reli- 
gious feeling and good works ; and Mrs. Linnet was 
SO agreeably surprised by the fact that Dempster 
had left his wife the money “in that handsome way, 
to do what she liked with it,’ that she even included 
Dempster himself, and his villanous discovery of 
the flaw in her title to Pye’s Croft, in her magnant- 
mous oblivion of past offences. She and Mrs. Jerome 
agreed over a friendly cup of tea that there were “a 
many husbands as was very fine spoken an’ all that, 
an’ yet all the while kep’ a will locked up from you, 
as tied you up as tight as anything. I assure you,” 
Mrs. Jerome continued, dropping her voice in a con- 
fidential manner, “I know no more to this day about 
Mr. Jerome’s will nor the child as is unborn. I’ve 
no fears about a income,—I’m well aware Mr. 
Jerome ’ud niver leave me stret for that; but I 
should like to hev a thousand or two at my own 
disposial ; it makes a widow a deal more looked on.” 

Perhaps this ground of respect to widows might 
not be entirely without its influence on the Milby 
mind, and might do something towards conciliating 
those more aristocratic acquaintances of Janet's, 
who would otherwise have been inclined to take 
the severest view of her apostasy towards Evangeli- 
calism. Errors look so very ugly in persons of small 
means, — one feels they are taking quite a liberty 
in going astray; whereas people of fortune may 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 157 


naturally indulge ina few delinquencies. “They ’ve 
got the money for it,” as the girl said of her mistress 
who had made herself ill with pickled salmon. 
However it may have been, there was not an ac- 
quaintance of Janet’s, in Milby, that did not offer 
her civilities in the early days of her widowhood. 
Even the severe Mrs. Phipps was not an exception; 
for heaven knows what would become of our social- 
ity if we never visited people we speak ill of: we 
should live, like Egyptian hermits, in crowded 
solitude. 

Perhaps the attentions most grateful to Janet 
were those of her old friend Mrs. Crewe, whose 
attachment to her favourite proved quite too strong 
for any resentment she might be supposed to feel 
on the score of Mr. Tryan. The little deaf old lady 
couldn’t do without her accustomed visitor, whom 
she had seen grow up from child to woman, always 
so willing to chat with her and tell her all the news, 
though she was deaf; while other people thought it 
tiresome to shout in her ear, and irritated her by 
recommending ear-trumpets of various construction. 

All this friendliness was very precious to Janet. 
She was conscious of the aid it gave her in the self- 
conquest which was the blessing she prayed for 
with every fresh morning. The chief strength of 
her nature lay in her affection, which coloured all 
the rest of her mind: it gave a personal sisterly 
tenderness to her acts of benevolence; it made her 
cling with tenacity to every object that had once 
stirred her kindly emotions. Alas! it was unsatis- 
fied, wounded affection that had made her trouble 
greater than she could bear. And now there was 
no check to the full flow of that plenteous current 
in her nature, no gnawing secret anguish, no 


158 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


overhanging terror, no inward shame. Friendly 
faces beamed on her; she felt that friendly hearts 
were approving her and wishing her well; and that 
mild sunshine of good-will fell beneficently on her 
new hopes and efforts, as the clear shining after 
rain falls on the tender leaf-buds of spring, and wins 
them from promise to fulfilment. 
And she needed these secondary helps, for her 
wrestling with her past self was not always easy. 
The strong emotions from which the life of a human 
being receives a new bias, win their victory as the sea 
wins his: though their advance may be sure, they 
will often, after a mightier wave than usual, seem 
to roll back so far as to lose all the ground they 
had made. Janet showed the strong bent of her 
will by taking every outward precaution against 
the occurrence of a temptation. Her mother was 
now her constant companion, having shut up her 
little dwelling and come to reside in Orchard Street ; 
and Janet gave all dangerous keys into her keeping, 
entreating her to lock them away in some secret 
place. Whenever the too well-known depression 
and craving threatened her, she would seek a refuge 
in what had always been her purest enjoyment, — 
in visiting one of her poor neighbours, in carrying 
some food or comfort to a sick-bed, in cheering with 
her smile some of the familiar dwellings up the 
dingy back lanes. But the great source of courage, 
the great help to perseverance, was the sense that 
she hada friend and teacher in Mr. Tryan: she could 
confess her difficulties to him; she knew he prayed 
for her; she had always before her the prospect of 
soon seeing him, and hearing words of admonition and 
comfort thatcame to her charged witha divine power 
such as she had never found in human words before. 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 159 


So the time passed, till it was far on in May, 
nearly a month after her husband’s death, when, as 
she and her mother were seated peacefully at break- 
fast in the dining-room, looking through the open 
window at the old-fashioned garden, where the grass- 
plot was now whitened with apple-blossoms, a letter 
was brought in for Mrs. Raynor. 

“Why, there’s the Thurston post-mark on it,” she 
said. “It must be about your aunt Anna. Ah, so 
it is, poor thing! she’s been taken worse this last 
day or two, and has asked them to send for me. 
That dropsy is carrying her off at last, I dare say. 
Poor thing! it will be a happy release. I must go, 
my dear, —she’s your father’s last sister, — though 
I am sorry to leave you. However, perhaps | shall 
not have to stay more than a night or two.” 

Janet looked distressed as she said: “ Yes, you 
must go, mother. But I don’t know what I shall 
do without you. I think I shall run in to Mrs. 
Pettifer, and ask her to come and stay with me 
while you’re away. I’m sure she will.” 

At twelve o’clock Janet, having seen her mother 
in the coach that was to carry her to Thurston, 
called, on her way back, at Mrs. Pettifer’s, but 
found, to her great disappointment, that her old 
friend was gone out for the day. So she wrote on 
a leaf of her pocket-book an urgent request that 
Mrs. Pettifer would come and stay with her while 
her mother was away; and desiring the servant- 
girl to give it to her mistress as soon as she came 
home, walked on to the Vicarage to sit with Mrs. 
Crewe, thinking to relieve in this way the feeling 
of desolateness and undefined fear that was taking 
possession of her on being left alone for the first 
time since that great crisis in her life. And Mrs. 
Crewe, too, was not at home! 


160 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


Janet, with a sense of discouragement for which 
she rebuked herself as childish, walked sadly home 
again ; and when she entered the vacant dining-room, 
she could not help bursting into tears. It is such 
vague undefinable states of susceptibility as this — 
states of excitement or depression, half mental, 
half physical—that determine many a tragedy in 
women’s lives. Janet could scarcely eat anything 
at her solitary dinner: she tried to fix her attention 
on a book in vain; she walked about the garden, 
and felt the very sunshine melancholy. 

Between four and five oclock, old Mr. Pittman 
called, and joined her in the garden, where she had 
been sitting for some time under one of the great 
apple-trees, thinking how Robert, in his best moods, 
used to take little Mamsey to look at the cucumbers, 
or to see the Alderney cow with its calf in the 
paddock. The tears and sobs had come again at 
these thoughts; and when Mr. Pittman approached 
her, she was feeling languid and exhausted. But 
the old gentleman’s sight and sensibility were 
obtuse, and, to Janet’s satisfaction, he showed no 
consciousness that she was in grief. 

“T have a task to impose upon you, Mrs. Demp- 
ster,” he said, with a certain toothless pomposity 
habitual to him: “I want you to look over those 
letters again in Dempster’s bureau, and see if you can 
find one from Poole about the mortgage on those 
houses at Dingley. It will be worth twenty pounds, 
if you can find it; and I don’t know where it can be, 
if it isn’t among those letters in the bureau. I’ve 
looked everywhere at the office forit. I’m going 
home now, but [’ll call again to-morrow, if you’ll be 
good enough to look in the mean time.” 

Janet said she would look directly, and turned 
with Mr. Pittman into the house. But the search 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 161 


would take her some time; so he bade her good-by, 
and she went at once to a bureau which stood in a 
_ small back-room, where Dempster used sometimes 
to write letters and receive people who came on 
business out of office hours. She had looked through 
the contents of the bureau more than once; but to- 
day, on removing the last bundle of letters from one 
of the compartments, she saw what she had never 
seen before, a small nick in the wood, made in the 
shape of a thumb-nail, evidently intended as a means 
of pushing aside the movable back of the compart- 
ment. In her examination hitherto she had not 
found such a letter as Mr. Pittman had described, — 
perhaps there might be more letters behind this 
slide. She pushed it back at once, and saw —no 
letters, but a small spirit-decanter, half full of pale 
brandy, Dempster’s habitual drink. 

An impetuous desire shook Janet through all her 
members, it seemed to master her with the inevit- 
able force of strong fumes that flood our senses 
before we are aware. Her hand was on the decan- 
ter; pale and excited, she was lifting it out of its 
niche, when, with a start and a shudder, she dashed 
it to the ground, and the room was filled with the 
odour of the spirit. Without staying to shut up the 
bureau, she rushed out of the room, snatched up 
her bonnet and mantle which lay in the dining- 
room, and hurried out of the house. 

Where should she go? In what place would this 
demon that had re-entered her be scared back again? 
She walked rapidly along the street in the direction 
of the church. She was soon at the gate of the 
churchyard ; she passed through it, and made her 
way across the graves to a spot she knew, —a spot 


where the turf had been stirred not long before, 
VOL. 11.— 1] 


162 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


where a tomb was to be erected soon. It was very 
near the church wall, on the side which now lay in 
deep shadow, quite shut out from the rays of the 
westering sun by a projecting buttress. 

Janet sat down on the ground. It was a sombre 
spot. A thick hedge, surmounted by elm-trees, was 
in front of her; a projecting buttress on each side. 
But she wanted to shut out even these objects. 
Her thick crape veil was down; but she closed her 
eyes behind it, and pressed her hands upon them. 
She wanted to summon up the vision of the past; 
she wanted to lash the demon out of her soul with 
the stinging memories of the bygone misery; she 
wanted to renew the old horror and the old anguish, 
that she might throw herself with the more desper- 
ate clinging energy at the foot of the cross, where the 
Divine Sufferer would impart divine strength. She 
tried to recall those first bitter moments of shame, 
which were like the shuddering discovery of the 
leper that the dire taint is upon him; the deeper 
and deeper lapse; the oncoming of settled despair ; 
the awful moments by the bedside of her self- 
maddened husband. And then she tried to live 
through, with a remembrance made more vivid by 
that contrast, the blessed hours of hope and joy and 
peace that had come to her of late, since her whole 
soul had been bent towards the attainment of purity 
and holiness. 

But now, when the paroxysm of temptation was 
past, dread and despondency began to thrust them- 
selves, like cold heavy mists, between her and the 
heaven to which she wanted to look for light and 
guidance. The temptation would come again, — 
that rush of desire might overmaster her the next 
time, —she would slip back again into that deep 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 163 


slimy pit from which she had been once rescued, 
and there might be no deliverance for her more. 
Her prayers did not help her, for fear predominated 
over trust; she had no confidence that the aid she 
sought would be given; the idea of her future fall 
had grasped her mind too strongly. Alone, in this 
way, she was powerless. If she could see Mr. Tryan, 
if she could confess all to him, she might gather 
hope again. She must see him; she must go to 
him. 

Janet rose from the ground, and walked away 
with a quick resolved step. She had been seated 
there a long while, and the sun had already sunk. 
It was late for her to walk to Paddiford and go to 
Mr. Tryan’s, where she had never called before ; 
but there was no other way of seeing him that even- 
ing, and she could not hesitate about it. She 
walked towards a footpath through the fields, which 
would take her to Paddiford without obliging her 
to go through the town. The way was rather long, 
but she preferred it, because it left less probability 
of her meeting acquaintances, and she shrank from 
having to speak to any one. 

The evening red had nearly faded by the time 
Janet knocked at Mrs. Wagstaff’s door. The good 
woman looked surprised to see her at that hour; 
but Janet’s mourning weeds and the painful agitation 
of her face quickly brought the second thought, that 
some urgent trouble had sent her there. 

“Mr. Tryan’s just come in,” she said. “If you’ll 
step into the parlour, I’ll go up and tell him you’re 
here. He seemed very tired and poorly.” 

At another time Janet would have felt distress 
at the idea that she was disturbing Mr. Tryan when 
he required rest; but now her need was too great 


164 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


for that: she could feel nothing but a sense of 
coming relief, when she heard his step on the stair 
and saw him enter the room. 

He went towards her with a look of anxiety, and 
said: “I fear something is the matter. I fear you 
are in trouble.” 

Then poor Janet poured forth her sad tale of 
temptation and despondency; and even while she 
was confessing she felt half her burden removed. 
The act of confiding in human sympathy, the con- 
sciousness that a fellow-being was listening to her 
with patient pity, prepared her soul for that stronger 
leap by which faith grasps the idea of the Divine 
sympathy. When Mr. Tryan spoke words of con- 
solation and encouragement, she could now believe 
the message of mercy; the water-floods that had 
threatened to overwhelm her rolled back again, and 
life once more spread its heaven-covered space be- 
fore her. She had been unable to pray alone; but 
now his prayer bore her own soul along with it, as the 
broad tongue of flame carries upwards in its vigorous 
leap the little flickering fire that could hardly keep 
alight by itself. 

But Mr. Tryan was anxious that Janet should 
not linger out at this late hour. When he saw that 
she was calmed, he said, “I will walk home with 
you now; we can talk on the way.” But Janet's 
mind was now sufficiently at liberty for her to 
notice the signs of feverish weariness in his appear- 
ance, and she would not hear of causing him any 
further fatigue. 

“No, no,” she said earnestly, “you will pain me 
very much, — indeed you will, by going out again 
to-night on my account. There is no real reason 
why I should not go alone.” And when he per- 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 1605 


sisted, fearing that for her to be seen out so late 
alone might excite remark, she said imploringly, 
with a half sob in her voice, “What should I— 
what would others like me do, if you went from us? 
Why will you not think more of that, and take care 
of yourself ?” 

He had often had that appeal made to him before, 
but to-night — from Janet’s lips — it seemed to have 
a new force for him, and he gave way. At first, 
indeed, he only did so on condition that she would 
let Mrs. Wagstaff go with her; but Janet had deter- 
mined to walk home alone. She preferred solitude ; 
she wished not to have her present feelings dis- 
tracted by any conversation. 

So she went out into the dewy starlight; and as 
Mr. Tryan turned away from her, he felt a stronger 
wish than ever that his fragile life might last out 
for him to see Janet’s restoration thoroughly estab- 
lished, —to see her no longer fleeing, struggling, 
clinging up the steep sides of a precipice whence 
she might be any moment hurled back into the 
depths of despair, but walking firmly on the level 
eround of habit. He inwardly resolved that noth- 
ing but a peremptory duty should ever take him 
from Milby, —that he would not cease to watch 
over her until life forsook him. 

Janet walked on quickly till she turned into the 
fields; then she slackened her pace a little, enjoying 
the sense of solitude which a few hours before had 
been intolerable to her. The Divine Presence did 
not now seem far off, where she had not wings to 
reach it; prayer itself seemed superfluous in those 
moments of calm trust. The temptation which had 
so lately made her shudder before the possibilities 
of the future was now a source of confidence; for 


166 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, 


had she not been delivered from it? Had not rescue 
come in the extremity of danger? Yes; Infinite 
Love was caring for her. She felt like a little 
child whose hand is firmly grasped by its father, as 
its frail limbs make their way over the rough ground ; 
if it should stumble, the father will not let it go. 

That walk in the dewy starlight remained forever 
in Janet’s memory as one of those baptismal epochs, 
when the soul, dipped in the sacred waters of joy 
and peace, rises from them with new energies, with 
more unalterable longings. 

When she reached home, she found Mrs. Pettifer 
there, anxious for her return. After thanking her for 
coming, Janet only said, “I have been to Mr. Tryan’s ; 
I wanted to speak to him;” and then remembering 
how she had left the bureau and papers, she went 
into the back-room, where, apparently, no one had 
been since she quitted it; for there lay the frag- 
ments of glass, and the room was still full of the 
hateful odour. How feeble and miserable the temp- 
tation seemed to her at this moment! She rang 
for Kitty to come and pick up the fragments and 
rub the floor, while she herself replaced the papers 
and locked up the bureau. 

The next morning, when seated at breakfast with 
Mrs. Pettifer, Janet said, — 

“What a dreary, unhealthy-looking place that is 
where Mr. Tryan lives! I’m sure it must be very 
bad for him to live there. Do you know, all this 
morning, since I’ve been awake, I’ve been turning 
over a little plan in my mind. I think it a charm- 
ing one, —all the more because you are concerned 
inate 

“Why, what can that be?” 

“You know that house on the Redhill road they 


JANET’S REPENTANCE, 167 


call Holly Mount; it is shut up now That is 
Robert’s house; at least, it is mine now, and it 
stands on one of the healthiest spots about here. 
Now, I’ve been settling in my own mind that if a 
dear good woman of my acquaintance, who knows 
how to make a home as comfortable and cosey as a 
bird’s-nest, were to take up her abode there, and 
have Mr. Tryan as a lodger, she would be doing one 
of the most useful deeds in all her useful life.” 

“You’ve such a way of wrapping up things in 
pretty words. You must speak plainer.” 

“Tn plain words, then, I should like to settle you 
at Holly Mount. You would not have to pay any 
more rent than where you are, and it would be 
twenty times pleasanter for you than living up that 
passage where you see nothing but a brick wall. 
And then, as it is not far from Paddiford, I think 
Mr. Tryan might be persuaded to lodge with you, 
instead of in that musty house, among dead cab- 
bages and smoky cottages. I know you would like 
to have him live with you, and you would be sucha 
mother to him.” 

“To be sure I should like it; it would be the 
finest thing in the world for me. But there ’ll be 
furniture wanted. My little bit of furniture won't 
fill that house.” 

“Oh, I can put some in out of this house: it 1s 
too full; and we can buy the rest. They tell me 
I’m to have more money than I shall know what to 
do. with.” 

“T’m almost afraid,” said Mrs. Pettifer, doubtfully, 
“Mr. Tryan will hardly be persuaded. He’s been 
talked to so much about leaving that place; and he 
always said he must stay there, — he must be among 
the people, and there was no other place for him in 


168 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


Paddiford. It cuts me to the heart to see him get- 
ting thinner and thinner, and I’ve noticed him quite 
short o’ breath sometimes. Mrs. Linnet will have 
it Mrs. Wagstaff half poisons him with bad cooking. 
I don’t know about that, but he can’t have many 
comforts. I expect he’ll break down all of a sudden 
some day, and never be able to preach any more.” 

“Well, I shall try my skill with him by and by. 
I shall be very cunning, and say nothing to him till 
all is ready. You and I and mother, when she 
comes home, will set to work directly and get the 
house in order, and then we’ll get you snugly settled 
in it. I shall see Mr. Pittman to-day, and I will 
tell him what I mean to do. I shall say I wish to 
have you for a tenant. Everybody knows I’m very 
fond of that naughty person, Mrs. Pettifer; so 1b 
will seem the most natural thing in the world, And 
then I shall by and by point out to Mr. Tryan that 
he will be doing you a service as well as himself by 
taking up his abode with you. I think I can pre- 
vail upon him; for last night, when he was quite 
bent on coming out into the night air, I persuaded 
Him*to serve ti pas 

“Well, I only hope you may, my dear. I don't 
desire anything better than to do something towards 
prolonging Mr. Tryan’s life, for I’ve sad fears about 
him.” 

“Don’t speak of them,—TI can’t bear to think 
of them. We will only think about getting the 
house ready. -We shall be as busy as bees. How 
we shall want mother’s clever fingers! I know the 
room upstairs that will just do for Mr. Tryan’s 
study. There shall be no seats in it except a very 
easy chair and a very easy sofa, so that he shall be 
obliged to rest himself when he comes home.” 


herd Hives Sail 


THAT was the last terrible crisis of temptation Janet 
had to pass through. The good-will of her neigh- 
bours, the helpful sympathy of the friends who 
shared her religious feelings, the occupations sug- 
gested to her by Mr. Tryan, concurred, with her 
strong spontaneous impulses towards works of love 
and mercy, to fill up her days with quiet social 
intercourse and charitable exertion. Besides, her 
constitution, naturally healthy and strong, was every 
week tending, with the gathering force of habit, to 
recover its equipoise, and set her free from those 
physical solicitations which the smallest habitual 
vice always leaves behind it. The prisoner feels 
where the iron has galled him long after his fetters 
have been loosed. 

There were always neighbourly visits to be paid 
and received; and as the months wore on, increas- 
ing familiarity with Janet's present self began to 
efface, even from minds as rigid as Mrs. Phipps’s, 
the unpleasant impressions that had been left by 
recent years. Janet was recovering the popularity 
which her beauty and sweetness of nature had won 
for her when she was a girl; and popularity, as 
every one knows, is the most complex and self- 
multiplying of echoes. Even anti-Tryanite preju- 
dice could not resist the fact that Janet Dempster 
was a changed woman,—changed as the dusty, 
bruised, and sun-withered plant is changed when 


170 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


the soft rains of heaven have fallen on it, —and 
that this change was due to Mr. Tryan’s influence. 
The last lingering sneers against the Evangelical 
curate began to die out; and though much of the 
feeling that had prompted them remained behind, 
there was an intimidating consciousness that the 
expression of such feeling would not be effective, — 
jokes of that sort had ceased to tickle the Milby 
mind. Even Mr. Budd and Mr. Tomlinson, when 
they saw Mr. Tryan passing pale and worn along 
the street, had a secret sense that this man was 
somehow not that very natural and comprehensible 
thing, a humbug, — that, in fact, it was impossible 
to explain him from the stomach-and-pocket point 
of view. Twist and stretch their theory as they 
‘ might, it would not fit Mr. Tryan; and so, with 
that remarkable resemblance as to mental processes 
which may frequently be observed to exist between 
plain men and philosophers, they concluded that 
the less they said about him the better. 

Among all Janet’s neighbourly pleasures, there 
was nothing she liked better than to take an early 
tea at the White House, and to stroll with Mr, 
Jerome round the old-fashioned garden and orchard. 
There was endless matter for talk between her and 
the good old man, for Janet had that genuine delight 
in human fellowship which gives an interest to all 
personal details that come warm from truthful lips ; 
and, besides, they had a common interest in good- 
natured plans for helping their poorer neighbours. 
One great object of Mr. Jerome’s charities was, as 
he often said, “to keep industrious men an’ women 
off the parish. I’d rether give ten shillin’ an’ help 
a man to stan’ on his own legs, nor pay half-a-crown 
to buy him a parish crutch; it’s the ruination on 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 171 


him if he once goes to the parish. I’ve see’d many 
a time, if you help a man wi’ a present in a nee- 
bourly way, it sweetens his blood, —he thinks it 
kind on you; but the parish shillins turn it sour, — 
he niver thinks °em enough.” In illustration of 
this opinion Mr. Jerome had a large store of details 
about such persons as Jim Hardy, the coal-carrier, 
“as lost his hoss,” and Sally Butts, “as hed to sell 
her mangle, though she was as decent a woman as 
need to be;” to the hearing of which details Janet 
seriously inclined; and you would hardly desire to 
see a prettier picture than the kind-faced, white- 
haired old man telling these fragments of his simple 
experience as he walked, with shoulders slightly 
bent, among the moss-roses and espalier apple-trees, 
while Janet in her widow’s cap, her dark eyes bright 
with interest, went listening by his side, and little 
Lizzie, with her nankin bonnet hanging down her 
back, toddled on before them. Mrs. Jerome usu- 
ally declined these lingering strolls, and often 
observed, “I niver see the like to Mr. Jerome when 
he’s got Mrs. Dempster to talk to; it sinnifies 
nothin’ to him whether we’ve tea at four or at five 
o’clock; he’d go on till six, if you’d let him alone, 
he’s like off his head.” However, Mrs. Jerome 
herself could not deny that Janet was a very pretty- 
spoken woman: “She al’ys says, she niver gets sich 
pikelets as mine nowhere; I know that very well, 
other folks buy ’em at shops, — thick unwhole- 
some things, you might as well eat a sponge.” 

The sight of little Lizzie often stirred in Janet's 
mind a sense of the childlessness which had made a 
fatal blank in her life. She had fleeting thoughts 
that perhaps among her husband's distant relatives 
there might be some children whom she could help 


U7Z SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


to bring up, some little girl whom she might adopt ; 
and she promised herself one day or other to hunt 
out a second cousin of his, —a married woman, of 
whom he had lost sight for many years. 

But at present her hands and heart were too full 
for her to carry out that scheme. ‘To her great dis- 
appointment, her project of settling Mrs. Pettifer at 
Holly Mount had been delayed by the discovery 
that some repairs were necessary in order to make 
the house habitable, and it was not till September 
had set in that she had the satisfaction of. seeing 
her old friend comfortably installed, and the rooms 
destined for Mr. Tryan looking pretty and cosey to 
her heart's content. She had taken several of his 
chief friends into her confidence, and they were 
warmly wishing success to her plan for inducing 
him to quit poor Mrs. Wagstaff’s dingy house and 
dubious cookery. That he should consent to some 
such change was becoming more and more a matter 
of anxiety to his hearers ; for though no more decided 
symptoms were yet observable in him than increasing 
emaciation, a dry hacking cough, and an occa- 
sional shortness of breath, it was felt that the ful- 
filment of Mr. Pratt’s prediction could not long be 
deterred, and that this obstinate persistence in labour 
and self-disregard must soon be peremptorily cut 
short by a total failure of strength. Any hopes 
that the influence of Mr. Tryan’s father and sister 
would prevail on him to change his mode of life — 
that they would perhaps come to live with him, or 
that his sister at least might come to see him, and 
that the arguments which had failed from other 
lips might be more persuasive from hers — were 
now quite dissipated. His father had lately had an 
attack of paralysis, and could not spare his only 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 173 


daughter’s tendance. On Mr. Tryan’s return from 
a visit to his father, Miss Linnet was very anxious 
to know whether his sister had not urged him to try 
change of air. From his answers she gathered that 
Miss Tryan wished him to give up his curacy and 
travel, or at least go to the south Devonshire coast. 

“And why will you not do so?” Miss Linnet 
said; “you might come back to us well and strong, 
and have many years of usefulness before you.” 

“No,” he answered quietly, “1 think people attach 
more importance to such measures than is warranted. 
I don’t see any good end that is to be served by 
going to die at Nice, instead of dying amongst one’s 
friends and one’s work. I cannot leave Milby, — at 
least I will not leave it voluntarily.” 

But though he remained immovable on this point, he 
had been compelled to give up his afternoon service on 
the Sunday, and to accept Mr. Parry’s offer of aid in 
the evening service, as well as to curtail his wee k-day 
labours , and he had even written to Mr. Prendergast to 
request that he would appoint another curate to the 
Paddiford district, on the understanding that the new 
curate should receive the salary, but that Mr. Tryan 
should co-operate with him as long as he was able. 
The hopefulness which is an almost constant attend- 
ant on consumption, had not the effect of deceiving 
him as to the nature of his malady, or of making 
him look forward to ultimate recovery. He believed 
himself to be consumptive, and he had not yet felt 
any desire to escape the early death which he had 
for some time contemplated as probable. Even 
diseased hopes will take their direction from the 
strong habitual bias of the mind, and to Mr. Tryan 
death had for years seemed nothing else than the 
laying down of a burden, under which he some- 


174 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


times felt himself fainting. He was only sanguine 
about his powers of work: he flattered himself that 
what he was unable to do one week he should be 
equal to the next, and he would not admit that in 
desisting from any part of his labour, he was renounc- 
ing it permanently. He had lately delighted Mr. 
Jerome by accepting his long-proffered loan of the 
“little chacenut horse;” and he found so much 
benefit from substituting constant riding exercise 
for walking, that he began to think he should soon 
be able to resume some of the work he had dropped. 

That was a happy afternoon for Janet, when, 
after exerting herself busily for a week with her 
mother and Mrs. Pettifer, she saw Holly Mount 
looking orderly and comfortable from attic to 
cellar. It was an old red brick house, with two 
gables in front, and two clipped holly-trees flank- 
ing the garden-gate,—a simple, homely-looking 
place, that quiet people might easily get fond of; 
and now it was scoured and polished and carpeted 
and furnished so as to look really snug within. 
When there was nothing more to be done, Janet 
delighted herself with contemplating Mr. Tryan’s 
study, first sitting down in the easy-chair, and then 
lying for a moment on the sofa, that she might have 
a keener sense of the repose he would get from those 
well-stuffed articles of furniture, which she had 
gone to Rotherby on purpose to choose. 

“Now, mother,” she said, when she had fin- 
ished her survey, “you have done your work as 
well as any fairy-mother or godmother that ever 
turned a pumpkin into a coach and horses. You 
stay and have tea cosily with Mrs. Pettifer while 
I go to Mrs. Linnet’s. I want to tell Mary and 
Rebecca the good news, that I’ve got the excise- 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 175 


man to promise that he will take Mrs. Waestaif’s 
lodgings when Mr. Tryan leaves. They sls perso 
pleased to hear it, because they thought he would 
make her poverty an objection to his leaving her. 

fsbut, my dear child, ” said Mrs. Raynor, whose 
face, always calm, was now a happy one, * have a 
cup of tea with us first. You'll perhaps miss 
Mrs. Linnet’s teatime. ” 

“No, I feel too excited to take tea yet. [I’m 
like a child with a new baby-house. Walking in 
the air will do me good.” 

So she set out. Holly Mount was about a mile 
from that outskirt of Paddiford Common where 
Mrs. Linnet’s house stood nestled among its labur- 
nums, lilacs, and syringas. Janet's way thither 
lay for a little while along the high-road, and then 
led her into a deep-rutted lane, which wound 
through a flat tract of meadow and pasture, while 
in front lay smoky Paddiford, and away to the left 
the mother-town of Milby. There was no line of 
silvery willows marking the course of a stream, — 
no group of Scotch firs with their trunks reddening 
in the level sunbeams, — nothing to break the 
flowerless monotony of grass and hedgerow but an 
occasional oak or elm, and a few cows sprinkled 
here and there. A very commonplace scene in- 
deed. But what scene was ever commonplace in 
the descending sunlight, when colour has awakened 
from its noonday sleep, and the long shadows awe 
us like a disclosed presence? Above all, what 
scene is commonplace to the eye that is filled with 
serene gladness, and brightens all things with its 
own joy ? 

And Janet just now was very happy. As she 
walked along the rough lane with a buoyant step, 


176 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


a half smile of innocent, kindly triumph played 
about her mouth. She was delighting beforehand 
in the anticipated success of her persuasive power, 
and for the time her painful anxiety about Mr. 
Tryan’s health was thrown into abeyance. But 
she had not gone far along the lane before she 
heard the sound of a horse advancing at a walking 
pace behind her. Without looking back, she 
turned aside to make way for it between the ruts, 
and did not notice that for a moment it had 
stopped, and had then come on with a slightly 
quickened pace. In less than a minute she heard 
a well-known voice say, “ Mrs. Dempster;” and, 
turning, saw Mr. Tryan close to her, holding his 
horse by the bridle. It seemed very natural to 
her that he should be there. Her mind was so 
full of his presence at that moment that the 
actual sight of him was only like a more vivid 
thought, and she behaved, as we are apt to do 
when feeling obliges us to be genuine, with a total 
forgetfulness of polite forms. She only looked at 
him with a slight deepening of the smile that was 
already on her face. He said gently, “Take my 
arm;” and they walked on a little way in silence. 

It was he who broke it. “ You are going to 
Paddiford, I suppose ? ” 

The question recalled Janet to the consciousness 
that this was an unexpected opportunity for begin- 
ning her work of persuasion, and that she was 
stupidly neglecting it. 

“Yes,” she said, “I was going to Mrs. Linnet’s. 
I knew Miss Linnet would like to hear that our 
friend Mrs. Pettifer is quite settled now in her 
new house. She is as fond of Mrs. Pettifer as I 
am —almost; I won’t admit that any one loves 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 177 


her quite as well, for no one else has such good 
reason as I have. But now the dear woman wants 
a lodger, for you know she can’t afford to live in 
so large a house by herself. But I knew when I 
persuaded her to go there that she would be sure to 
get one,— she’s such a comfortable creature to live 
with; and I didn’t like her to spend all the rest 
of her days up that dull passage, being at every 
one’s beck and call who wanted to make use of 
iets, 

“Yes,” said Mr. Tryan, “I quite understand 
your feeling; I don’t wonder at your strong regard 
for her. ” 

“Well, but now I want her other friends to 
second me. There she is, with three rooms to let, 
ready furnished, everything in order; and I know 
some one, who thinks as well of her as I do, and 
who would be doing good all round,—- to every one 
that knows him, as well as to Mrs. Pettifer, —if he 
would go to live with her. He would leave some 
uncomfortable lodgings, which another person is 
already coveting and would take immediately ; and 
he would go to breathe pure air at Holly Mount, 
and gladden Mrs. Pettifer’s heart by letting her 
wait on him; and comfort all his friends, who are 
quite miserable about him.” 

Mr. Tryan saw it all in a moment, — he saw 
that it had all been done for his sake. He could 
not be sorry; he could not say no; he could not 
resist the sense that life had a new sweetness for 
him, and that he should like it to be prolonged a 
little, —-only a little, for the sake of feeling a 
stronger security about Janet. When she had 
finished speaking, she looked at him with a doubt- 


ful, inquiring glance. He was not looking at her; 
VOL. 11. — 12 


178 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


his eyes were cast downwards; but the expression 
of his face encouraged her, and she said, in a half- 
playful tone of entreaty, — 

“You will go and live with her? I know you 
will. You will come back with me now and see 
the house. ” 

He looked at her then, and smiled. There is an 
unspeakable blending of sadness and sweetness in 
the smile of a face sharpened and paled by slow 
consumption. That smile of Mr. Tryan’s pierced 
poor Janet's heart: she felt in it at once the assur- 
ance of grateful affection and the prophecy of 
coming death. Her tears rose; they turned round 
without speaking, and went back again along the 
lane. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


In less than a week Mr. Tryan was settled at 
Holly Mount, and there was not one of his many 
attached hearers who did not sincerely rejoice at 
the event. 

The autumn that year was bright and warm, and 
at the beginning of October Mr. Walsh, the new 
curate, came. The mild weather, the relaxation 
from excessive work, and perhaps another benig- 
nant influence, had for a few weeks a visibly 
favourable effect on Mr. Tryan. At least he began 
to feel new hopes, which sometimes took the guise 
of new strength. He thought of the cases in 
which consumptive patients remain nearly station- 
ary for years, without suffering so as to make 
their life burdensome to themselves or. to others ; 
and he began to struggle with a longing that it 
might be so with him. He struggled with it, be- 
cause he felt it to be an indication that earthly 
affection was beginning to have too strong a hold 
on him, and he prayed earnestly for more perfect 
submission, and for a more absorbing delight in 
the Divine Presence as the chief good. He was 
conscious that he did not wish for prolonged life 
solely that he might reclaim the wanderers and 
sustain the feeble: he was conscious of a new 
yearning for those pure human joys which he had 
voluntarily and determinedly banished from his 
life, —for a draught of that deep affection from 


180 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


which he had been cut off by a dark chasm of 
remorse. . For now, that affection was within his 
reach; he saw it there, like a palm-shadowed well 
in the desert; he could not desire to die in sight 
of it. 

And so the autumn rolled gently by in its “ calm 
decay.” Until November, Mr. Tryan continued 
to preach occasionally, to ride about visiting his 
flock, and to look in at his schools; but his grow- 
ing satisfaction in Mr. Walsh as his successor 
saved him from too eager exertion and from worry- 
ing anxieties. Janet was with him a great deal 
now, for she saw that he liked her to read to him 
in the lengthening evenings, and it became the 
rule for her and her mother to have tea at Holly 
Mount, where, with Mrs. Pettifer, and sometimes 
another friend or two, they brought Mr. Tryan the 
unaccustomed enjoyment of companionship by his 
own fireside. 

Janet did not share his new hopes, for she was 
not only in the habit of hearing Mr. Pratt's opin- 
‘ion that Mr. Tryan could hardly stand out through 
the winter, but she also knew that it was shared 
by Dr. Madeley of Rotherby, whom, at her re- 
quest, he had consented to call in. It was not 
necessary or desirable to tell Mr. Tryan what was 
revealed by the stethoscope, but Janet knew the 
worst. 

She felt no rebellion under this prospect of be- 
reavement, but rather a quiet submissive sorrow. 
Gratitude that his influence and guidance had been 
given her, even if only for a little while, — grati- 
tude that she was permitted to be with him, to 
take a deeper and deeper impress from daily com- 
munion with him, to be something to him in these 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 181 


last months of his life, was so strong in her that 
it almost silenced regret. Janet had lived through 
the great tragedy of woman’s life. Her keenest 
personal emotions had been poured forth in her 
early love, — her wounded affection with its years 
of anguish, — her agony of unavailing pity over that 
deathbed seven months ago. The thought of Mr. 
Tryan was associated for her with repose from that 
conflict of emotion, with trust in the unchange- 
able, with the influx of a power to subdue self. 
To have been assured of his sympathy, his teach- 
ing, his help, all through her life, would have 
been to her like a heaven already begun,—a deliv- 
erance from fear and danger; but the time was not 
yet come for her to be conscious that the hold he 
had on her heart was any other than that of the 
heaven-sent friend who had come to her lke the 
angel in the prison, and loosed her bonds, and led 
her by the hand till she could look back on the 
dreadful doors that had once closed her in. 
Before November was over Mr. Tryan had ceased 
to go out. A new crisis had come on: the cough 
had changed its character, and the worst symptoms 
developed themselves so rapidly that Mr. Pratt 
began to think the end would arrive sooner than 
he had expected. Janet became a constant attend- 
ant on him now, and no one could feel that she 
was performing anything but a sacred office. She 
made Holly Mount her home, and, with her 
mother and Mrs. Pettifer to help her, she filled 
the painful days and nights with every soothing 
influence that care and tenderness could devise. 
There were many visitors to the sick-room, led 
thither by venerating affection; and there could 
hardly be one who did not retain in after-years a 


182 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


vivid remembrance of the scene there, — of the pale 
wasted form in the easy-chair (for he sat up to the 
last), of the gray eyes so full even yet of inquiriug 
kindness, as’ the thin, almost transparent hand 
was held out to give the pressure of welcome; and 
of the sweet woman, too, whose dark watchful 
eyes detected every want, and who supplied the 
want with a ready hand. 

There were others who would have had the 
heart and the skill to fill this place by Mr. Tryan’s 
side, and who would have accepted it as an hon- 
our; but they could not help feeling that God had 
given it to Janet by a train of events which were 
too impressive not to shame all jealousies into 
silence. 

That sad history which most of us know too 
well, lasted more than three months. He was too 
feeble and suffering for the last few weeks to see 
any visitors, but he still sat up through the day. 
The strange hallucinations of the disease which had 
seemed to take a more decided hold on him just at 
the fatal crisis, and had made him think he was 
perhaps getting better at the very time when death 
had begun to hurry on with more rapid movement, 
had now given way, and left him calmly conscious 
of the reality. One afternoon near the end of 
February, Janet was moving gently about the 
room, in the fire-lit dusk, arranging some things 
that would be wanted in the night. There was no 
one else in the room, and his eyes followed her as 
she moved with the firm grace natural to her, 
while the bright fire every now and then lit up 
her face, and gave an unusual glow to its dark 
beauty. 

Even to follow her in this way with his eyes 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 183 


was an exertion that gave a painful tension to his 
face; while she looked like an image of life and 
strength. 

“ Janet,” he said presently, in his faint voice, — 
he always called her Janet now. In a moment 
she was close to him, bending over him. He 
opened his hand as he looked up at her, and she 
placed hers within it. 

“ Janet,” he said again, “ you will have a long 
while to live after I am gone.” 

A sudden pang of fear shot through her. She 
thought he felt himself dying, and she sank on 
her knees at his feet, holding his hand, while she 
looked up at him, almost breathless. 

“But you will not feel the need of me as you 


have done. . .. You have a sure trust in God 
_ Tshall not look for you in vain at the last. ” 
aN eee get, li shall be there . .)- God 


will not forsake me. ” 

She could hardly utter the words, though she 
was not weeping. She was waiting with trem- 
bling eagerness for anything else he might have 
to say. 

“Tet us kiss each other before we part.” 

She lifted up her face to his; and the full life- 
breathing lips met the wasted dying ones in a 
sacred kiss of promise. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


Ir soon came,— the blessed day of deliverance, the 
sad day of bereavement; and in the second week 
of March they carried him to the grave. He was 
buried as he had desired: there was no hearse, no 
mourning-coach ; his coffin was borne by twelve of 
his humble hearers, who relieved each other by 
turns. But he was followed by a long procession 
of mourning friends, women as well as men. 

Slowly, amid deep silence, the dark stream 
passed along Orchard Street, where eighteen 
months before the Evangelical curate had been 
saluted with hoctings and hisses. Mr. Jerome 
and Mr. Landor were the eldest pall-bearers; and 
behind the coffin, led by Mr. Tryan’s cousin, 
walked Janet, in quiet submissive sorrow. She 
could not feel that he was quite gone trom her; 
the unseen world lay so very near her, — it held all 
that had ever stirred the depths of anguish and joy 
within her. 

It was a cloudy morning, and had been raining 
when they left Holly Mount; but as they walked, 
the sun broke out, and the clouds were rolling off 
in large masses when they entered the churchyard, 
and Mr. Walsh’s voice was heard saying, “I am 
the Resurrection and the Life.” The faces were 
not hard at this funeral; the burial-service was 
not a hollow form. Every heart there was filled 
with the memory of a man who, through a self 


JANET’S REPENTANCE. 185 


sacrificing life and in a painful death, had been 
sustained by the faith which fills that form with 
breath and substance. 

When Janet left the grave, she did not return to 
Holly Mount; she went to her home in Orchard 
Street, where her mother was waiting to recelve 
her. She said quite calmly, “ Let us walk round 
the garden, mother.” And they walked round in 
silence, with their hands clasped together, looking 
at the golden crocuses bright in the spring sun- 
shine. Janet felt a deep stillness within. She 
thirsted for no pleasure; she craved no worldly 
good. She saw the years to come stretch before 
her like an autumn afternoon, filled with resigned 
memory. Life to her could nevermore have any 
eagerness; it was a solemn service of gratitude 
and patient effort. She walked in the presence of 
unseen witnesses, — of the Divine love that had 
rescued her, of the human love that waited for its 
eternal repose until it had seen her endure to the 
end. 


Janet is living still. Her black hair is gray, 
and her step is no longer buoyant ; but the sweet- 
ness of her smile remains, the love is not gone 
from her eyes; and strangers sometimes ask, Who 
is that noble-looking elderly woman that walks 
about holding a little boy by the hand? The little 
boy is the son of Janet's adopted daughter, and 
Janet in her old age has children about her knees, 
and loving young arms round her neck. 

There is a simple gravestone in Milby Church- 
yard, telling that in this spot lie the remains of 
Edgar Tryan, for two years officiating curate at the 
Paddiford Chapel-of-Ease, in this parish. Itisa 


186 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 


meagre memorial, and tells you simply that the 
man who lies there took upon him, faithfully or 
unfaithfully, the office of guide and instructor to 
his fellow-men. 

But there is another memorial of Edgar Tryan, 
which bears a fuller record: it is Janet Dempster, 
rescued from self-despair, strengthened with divine 
hopes, and now looking back on years of purity 
and helpful labour. The man who has left such a 
memorial behind him must have been one whose 
heart beat with true compassion, and whose lps 
were moved by fervent faith. 


THE END. 


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PREFACE. 


WisuHrEs have often been expressed that the articles 
known to have been written by George Eliot in 
the “ Westminster Review ” before she had become 
famous under that pseudonyme, should be repub- 
lished. Those wishes are now gratified, —as far, 
at any rate, as it is possible to gratify them. Jor 
it was not George Eliot's desire that the whole of 
those articles should be rescued from oblivion. 
And in order that there might be no doubt on the 
subject, she made, some time before her death, a 
collection of such of her fugitive writings as she 
considered deserving of a permanent form, care- 
fully revised them for the press, and left them in 
the order in which they here appear, with written 
injunctions that no other pieces written by her, of 
date prior to 1857, should be republished. 

It will thus be seen that the present collection 
of Essays has the weight of her sanction, and has 
had, moreover, the advantage of such corrections 
and alterations as a revision long subsequent to 
the period of writing may have suggested to her. 

The opportunity afforded by this republication 
seemed a suitable one for giving to the world some 
“notes,” as George Eliot simply called them, 
which belong to a much later period, and which 
have not been previously published. The exact 


190 PREFACE. 


date of their writing cannot be fixed with any cer- 
tainty, but it must have been some time between 
the appearance of “Middlemarch” and that of 
“ Theophrastus Such.” They were probably writ- 
ten without any distinct view to publication, — 
some of them for the satisfaction of her own mind ; 
others perhaps as memoranda, and with an idea of 
working them out more fully at some later time. 
It may be of interest to know that, besides the 
“notes” here given, the note-book contains four 
which appeared in “ Theophrastus Such,” three of 
them practically as they there stand; and it is not 
impossible that some of those in the present vol- 
ume might also have been so utilized had they not 
happened to fall outside the general scope of the 
work. The marginal titles are George Eliot’s 
own, but for the general title, “Leaves from a 
Note-book,” I am responsible. 
I need only add that, in publishing these notes, 
I have the complete concurrence of my friend, 
Mr. Cross. 
CHARLES LEE LEweEs. 


Hicgucate, December, 1883. 


ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


— 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLI- 
NEHSs?) THE: POET -YOUNG. 


THE study of men, as they have appeared in differ- 
ent ages and under various social conditions, may 
be considered as the natural history of the race. 
Let us, then, for a moment imagine ourselves as 
students of this natural history, dredging the first 
half of the eighteenth century, in search of speci- 
mens. About the year 1730 we have hauled up 
a remarkable individual of the species divine, —a 
surprising name, considering the nature of the 
animal before us, but we are used to unsuitable 
names in natural history. Let us examine this 
individual at our leisure. He is on the verge of 
fifty, and has recently undergone his metamorphosis 
into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical speci- 
men, if you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross 
between a sycophant and a psalmist; a poet whose 
imagination is alternately fired by the Last Day 
and by a creation of peers, who fluctuates between 
rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic 
applause of Jehovah. After spending “a foolish 
youth, the sport of peers and poets,” after being 
a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, 
after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and 
angling for pensions and preferment with fulsome 


192 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


dedications and fustian odes, he is a little dis- 
custed with his imperfect success, and has deter- 
mined to retire from the general mendicancy 
business to a particular branch; in other words, 
he has determined on that renunciation of the 
world implied in “ taking orders,” with the pros- 
pect of a good living and an advantageous matri- 
monial connection. And no man can be better 
fitted for an Established Church. He personifies 
completely her nice balance of temporalities and 
spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the 
momentousness of death and of burial fees; he 
languishes at once for immortal life and for “ liv- 
ings;” he has a fervid attachment to patrons in 
general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. 
He will teach, with something more than official 
conviction, the nothingness of earthly things; and 
he will feel something more than private disgust 
if his meritorious efforts in directing men’s atten- 
tion to another world are not rewarded by substan- 
tial preferment in this. His secular man believes 
in cambric bands and silk stockings as character- 
istic attire for “an ornament of religion and 
virtue,” hopes courtiers will never forget to copy 
Sir Robert Walpole, and writes begging-letters to 
the king’s mistress. His spiritual man recognizes 
no motives more familiar than Golgotha and * the 
skies;” it walks in graveyards, or it soars among 
the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejacula- 
tions and rebukes, and knows no medium between 
the ecstatic and the sententious. If it were not 
for the prospect of immortality, he considers, 1t 
would be wise and agreeable to be indecent, or to 
murder one’s father; and, heaven apart, it would 
be extremely irrational in any man not to be a 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 193 


knave. Man, he thinks, is a compound of the 
angel and the brute: the brute is to be humbled 
by being reminded of its “ relation to the stalls,” 
and frightened into moderation by the contempla- 
tion of death-beds and skulls; the angel is to be 
developed by vituperating this world and exalting 
the next; and by this double process you get the 
Christian, “the highest style of man.” With all 
this, our new-made divine is an unmistakable 
poet. Toa clay compounded chiefly of the world- 
ling and the rhetorician, there is added a real 
spark of Promethean fire. He will one day clothe 
his apostrophes and objurgations, his astronomical 
religion and his charnel-house morality, in lasting 
verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made 
of gold and jewels, at once magnificent and repul- 
sive; for this divine is Edward Young, the future 
author of the “ Night Thoughts. ” 

It would be extremely ill-bred in us to suppose 
that our readers are not acquainted with the facts 
of Young’s life; they are amongst the things that 
“every one knows,” but we have observed that 
with regard to these universally known matters 
the majority of readers like to be treated after the 
plan suggested by Monsieur Jourdain. When that 
distinguished bourgeois was asked if he knew 
Latin, he replied, “ Oui, mais faites comme si je 
ne le savais pas.” Assuming, then, as a polite 
writer should, that our readers know everything 
about Young, it will be a direct sequitur from that 
assumption that we should proceed as if they 
knew nothing, and recall the incidents of his biog- 
raphy with as much particularity as we may, with- 


out trenching on the space we shall need for our 
VOL. 11.—13 


194 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


main purpose, — the reconsideration of his character. 
as a moral and religious poet. 

Judging trom Young’s works, one might imagine 
that the preacher had been organized in him by 
hereditary transmission through a long line of 
clerical forefathers, that the diamonds of the 
“Night Thoughts” had been slowly condensed 
from the charcoal of ancestral sermons. Yet it 
was not so. His grandfather, apparently, wrote 
himself gentleman, not clerk; and there is no 
evidence that preaching had run in the family 
blood before it took that turn in the person of the 
poet’s father, who was quadruply clerical, being 
at once rector, prebendary, Court chaplain, and 
dean. Young was born at his father’s rectory of 
Upham, in 1681. We may confidently assume 
that even the author of the “ Night Thoughts ” 
came into the world without a wig; but, apart 
from Dr. Doran’s authority, we should not have 
ventured to state that the excellent rector “ kissed, 
with dignified emotion, his only son and intended 
namesake.” Dr. Doran doubtless knows this, 
from his intimate acquaintance with clerical phy- 
siology and psychology. He has ascertained that 
the paternal emotions of prebendaries have a sa- 
cerdotal quality, and that the very chyme and 
chyle of a rector are conscious of the gown and 
band. 

In due time the boy went to Winchester College, 
and subsequently, though not till he was twenty- 
two, to Oxford, where, for his father’s sake, he 
was befriended by the wardens of two colleges, and 
in 1708, three years after his father’s death, nom1- 
nated by Archbishop Tenison to a law-fellowship 
at All Souls. Of Young’s life at Oxford in these 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 195 


years, hardly anything is known. His biographer, 
Croft, has nothing to tell us but the vague report 
that, when “ Young found himself independent 
and his own master at All Souls, he was not the 
ornament to religion and morality that he after- 
wards became,” and the perhaps apocryphal anec- 
dote, that Tindal, the atheist, confessed himself 
embarrassed by the originality of Young’s argu- 
ments. Both the report and the anecdote, how- 
ever, are borne out by indirect evidence. As to 
the latter, Young has left us sufficient proof that 
he was fond of arguing on the theological <side, 
and that he had his own way of treating old sub- 
jects. As to the former, we learn that Pope, after 
saying other things which we know to be true of 
Young, added, that he passed “a foolish youth, 
the sport of peers and poets;” and from all the 
indications we possess of his career till he was 
nearly fifty, we are inclined to think that Pope’s 
statement only errs by defect, and that he should 
rather have said, “a foolish youth and middle 
age.” It is not likely that Young was a very hard 
student, for he impressed Johnson, who saw him 
in his old ‘age, as “not a great scholar,” and as 
surprisingly ignorant of what Johnson thought 
“quite common maxims” in literature; and there 
is no evidence that he filled either his leisure or 
his purse by taking pupils. His career as an 
author did not commence till he was nearly thirty, 
even dating from the publication of a portion of 
the “Last Day,” in the “Tatler;” so that he 
could hardly have been absorbed in composition. 
But where the fully developed insect is parasitic, 
we believe the larva is usually parasitic also, and 
we shall probably not be far wrong in supposing 


196 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


that Young at Oxford, as elsewhere, spent a good 
deal of his time in hanging about possible and 
actual patrons, and accommodating himself to their 
habits with considerable flexibility of conscience 
and of tongue; being none the less ready, upon 
occasion, to present himself as the champion of 
theology, and to rhapsodize at convenient moments 
in the company of the skies or of skulls. That 
brilliant profligate, the Duke of Wharton, to 
whom Young afterwards clung as his chief patron, 
was at this time a mere boy; and though it is 
probable that their intimacy had commenced, 
since the Duke’s father and mother were friends 
of the old Dean, that intimacy ought not to aggra- 
vate any unfavourable inference as to Young’s 
Oxford life. It is less likely that he fell into any 
exceptional vice than that he differed from the 
men around him chiefly in his episodes of theo- 
logical advocacy and rhapsodic solemnity. He 
probably sowed his wild oats after the coarse fash- 
ion of his times, for he has left us sufficient evi- 
dence that his moral sense was not delicate; but 
his companions, who were occupied in sowing 
their own oats, perhaps took it as a matter of 
course that he should be a rake, and were only 
struck with the exceptional circumstance that he 
was a pious and moralizing rake. 

There is some irony in the fact that the two 
first poetical productions of Young, published in 
the same year, were his “ Epistle to Lord Lans- 
downe,” celebrating the recent creation of, peers, 
—lLord Lansdowne’s creation in particular, — and 
the “Last Day.” Other poets, besides Young, 
found the device for obtaining a Tory majority — 
by turning twelve insignificant commoners into 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 197 


insignificant lords—an irresistible stimulus to 
verse; but no other poet showed so versatile an 
enthusiasm, so nearly equal an ardour for the hon- 
our of the new baron and the honour of the Deity. 
But the twofold nature of the sycophant and the 
psalmist is not more strikingly shown in the con- 
trasted themes of the two poems than in the 
transitions from bombast about monarchs to bom- 
bast about the resurrection, in the “ Last Day ” it- 
self. The dedication of the poem to Queen Anne, 
Young afterwards suppressed, for he was always 
ashamed of having flattered a dead patron. In 
this dedication, Croft tells us, “ he gives her Maj- 
esty praise indeed for her victories, but says that 
the author is more pleased to see her rise from 
this lower world, soaring above the clouds, pass- 
ing the first and second heavens, and leaving the 
fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose her there, 
he says, but keep her still in view through the 
boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in 
her journey towards eternal bliss, till he behold 
the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving 
and conveying her still onward from the stretch of 
his imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and 
falls back again to earth.” 

The self-criticism which prompted the suppres- 
sion of the dedication did not, however, lead him 
to improve either the rhyme or the reason of the 
unfortunate couplet, — 


*¢ When other Bourbons reign in other lands, 
And, if men’s sins forbid not, other Annes.” 


In the “ Epistle to Lord Lansdowne,” Young 
indicates his taste for the drama; and there is 


“ 


evidence that his tragedy of “ Busiris” was “in 


198 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


the theatre” as early as this very year, 1713, 
though it was not brought on the stage till nearly 
six years later; so that Young was now very de- 
cidedly bent on authorship, for which his degree 
of B.C. L., taken in this year, was doubtless a 
magical equipment. Another poem, “ The Force 
of Religion; or, Vanquished Love,” founded on 
the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, 
quickly followed, showing fertility in feeble and 
tasteless verse; and on the Queen’s death, in 1714, 
Young lost no time in making a poetical lament 
for a departed patron a vehicle for extravagant 
laudation of the new monarch. No further literary 
production of his appeared until 1716, when a 
Latin oration which he delivered on the founda- 
tion of the Codrington Library at All Souls, gave 
him a new opportunity for displaying his alacrity 
in inflated panegyric. 

In 1717 it is probable that Young accompanied 
the Duke of Wharton to Ireland, though so slender 
are the materials for his biography that the chief 
basis for this supposition is a passage in his “ Con- 
jectures on Original Composition,” written when 
he was nearly eighty, in which he intimates that 
he had once been in that country. But there are 
many facts surviving to indicate that for the next 
eight or nine years Young was a sort of attaché of 
Wharton’s. In 1719, according to legal records, 
the Duke granted him an annuity, in consideration 
of his having relinquished the office of tutor to 
Lord Burleigh with a life annuity of £100 a year, 
on his Grace’s assurances that he would provide 
for him in a much more ample manner. And 
again, from the same evidence, it appears that in > 
1721. Young received from Wharton a bond for 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 199 


£600, in compensation of expenses incurred in 
standing for Parliament at the Duke's desire, and 
as an earnest of greater services which his Grace 
had promised him on his refraining from the spir- 
itual and temporal advantages of taking orders, 
with a certainty of two livings in the gift of his 
college. It is clear, therefore, that lay advance- 
ment, as long as there was any chance of it, had 
more attractions for Young than clerical prefer- 
ment; and that at this time he accepted the Duke 
of Wharton as the pilot of his career. 

A more creditable relation of Young’s was his 
friendship with Tickell, with whom he was in the 
habit of interchanging criticisms, and to whom in 
1719 —the same year, let us note, in which he 
took his doctor’s degree — he addressed his “ Lines 
on the Death of Addison.” Close upon these fol- 
lowed his “ Paraphrase of part of the Book of Job,” 
with a dedication to Parker, recently made Lord 
Chancellor, showing that the possession of Whar- 
ton’s patronage did not prevent Young from fishing 
in other waters. He knew nothing of Parker, but 
that did not prevent him from magnifying the 
new Chancellor’s merits; on the other hand, he did 
know Wharton, but this again did not prevent 
him from prefixing to his tragedy, “ The Revenge, i 
which appeared in 1721, a dedication attributing 
to the Duke all virtues as well as all accomplish- 
ments. In the concluding sentence of this dedi- 
cation Young naively indicates that a considerable 
ingredient in his gratitude was a lively sense of 
anticipated favours. “My present fortune is his 
bounty, and my future his. care, — which I will 
venture to say will always be remembered to his 
honour; since he, i: know,. intended his generosity 


200 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


as an encouragement to merit, though, through his 
very pardonable partiality to one who bears him 
So sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive 
the benefit of it.” Young was economical with 
his ideas and images; he was rarely satisfied with 
using a clever thing once, and this bit of ingenious 
humility was afterwards made to do duty in the 
“ Instalment,” a poem addressed to Walpole :— 


“* Be this thy partial smile, from censure free ; 
*T was meant for merit, though it fell on me.” 


It was probably “The Revenge,” that Young 
was writing when, as we learn from Spence’s 
anecdotes, the Duke of Wharton gave him a skull 
with a candle fixed in it, as the most appropriate 
lamp by which to write tragedy. According to 
Young’s dedication, the Duke was “ accessary ” to 
the scenes of this tragedy in a more important 
way, “not only by suggesting the most beautiful 
incident in them, but by making all possible pro- 
vision for the success of the whole.” A statement 
which is credible, not indeed on the ground of 
Young’s dedicatory assertion, but from the known 
ability of the Duke, who, as Pope tells us, possessed 


‘each gift of Nature and of Art, 
And wanted nothing but an honest heart.” 


The year 1722 seems to have been the period of 
a visit to Mr. Dodington, of Eastbury, in Dorset- 
shire, —the “pure Dorsetian downs,” celebrated 
by Thomson, — in which Young made the acquaint- 
ance of Voltaire; for in the subsequent dedication 
of his “Sea Piece” to “ Mr. Voltaire,” he recalls 
their meeting on “ Dorset Downs;” and it was in 
this year that Christopher Pitt, a gentleman-poet 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 207 


of those days, addressed an “ Epistle to Dr. Edward 
Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire,” which has at 
least the merit of this biographical couplet, — 


“While with your Dodington retired you sit, 
Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit.” 


Dodington, apparently, was charmed in his turn, 
for he told Dr. Wharton that Young was “ far 
superior to the French poet in the variety and 
novelty of his bon-mots and repartees.” Unfortu- 
nately, the only specimen of Young’s wit on this 
occasion, that has been preserved to us, is the 
epigram represented as an extempore retort (spoken 
aside, surely) to Voltaire’s criticism of Milton’s 
episode of sin and death: — 


“ Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, 
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin ;”’ 


an epigram which, in the absence of “ flowing Bur- 
gundy,” does not strike us as remarkably brilliant. 
Let us give Young the benefit of the doubt thrown 
on the genuineness of this epigram by his own 
poetical dedication in which he represents himself 
as having “soothed” Voltaire’s “rage” against 
Milton “with gentle rhymes;” though in other 
respects that dedication is anything but favourable 
to a high estimate of Young’s wit. Other evidence 
apart, we should not be eager for the after-dinner 
conversation of the man who wrote,— 


“Thine is the Drama, how renowned! 
Thine Epic’s loftier trump to sound ; 
But let Arion’s sea-strung harp be mine : 
But where’s his dolphin? Know’st thou where ? 
May that be found in thee, Voltaire /” 


202 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


The “ Satires ” appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, 
of course, with its laudatory dedication and its 
compliments insinuated amongst the rhymes. The 
seventh and last is dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, 
is very short, and contains nothing in particular 
except lunatic flattery of George the First and his 
prime minister, attributing that royal hog’s late 
escape from a storm at sea to the miraculous influ- 
ence of his grand and virtuous soul; for George, he 
says, rivals the angels : — 


“George, who in foes can soft affections raise, 
And charm envenomed satire into praise. 
Nor human rage alone his power perceives, 
But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves, 
E’en storms (Death’s fiercest ministers!) forbear, 
And in their own wild empire learn to spare. 
Thus, Nature’s self, supporting Man’s decree, 
Styles Britain’s sovereign, sovereign of the sea.” 


As for Walpole, what he felt at this SSSA 
crisis, — 


** No powers of language, but his own, can tell ; 
His own, which Nature and the Graces form, 
At will to raise or hush the civil storm.” 


It is a coincidence worth noticing that this 
Seventh Satire was published in 1726, and that 
the warrant of George the First, granting Young 
a pension of £200 a year from Lady-day, 1725, i 
dated May 3, 1726. The gratitude exhibited in 
this Satire may have been chiefly prospective; but 
the “ Instalment,” a poem inspired by the thrilling 
event of Walpole’s installation as Knight of the 
Garter, was clearly written with the double ardour 
of a man who has got a pension, and hopes for 
something more. His emotion about Walpole is 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 203 


precisely at the same pitch as his subsequent 
emotion about the Second Advent. In the “ In- 
stalment ” he says, — 


‘* With invocations some their hearts inflame; 
I need no muse, a Walpole is my theme.” 


And of God coming to Judgment, he says, in the 
“Night Thoughts ” : — 


‘¢]T find my inspiration is my theme ; 
The grandeur of my subject is my muse.” 


Nothing can be feebler than this “ Instalment, ” 
except in the strength of impudence with which 
the writer professes to scorn the prostitution of 
_ fair fame, the “ profanation of celestial fire. ” 

Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more 
than three thousand pounds by his “ Satires,” — a 
surprising statement, taken in connection with the 
reasonable doubt he throws on the story related in 
Spence’s “ Anecdotes,” that the Duke of Wharton 
gave Young £2,000 for this work. Young, how- 
ever, seems to have been tolerably fortunate in 
the pecuniary results of his publications; and 
with his literary profits, his annuity from Whar- 
ton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to men- 
tion other bounties which may be inferred from 
the high merits he discovers in many men of 
wealth and position, we may fairly suppose that 
he now laid the foundation of the considerable for- 
tune he left at his death. 

It is probable that the Duke of Wharton’s final 
departure for the Continent and disgrace at Court 
in 1726, and the consequent cessation of Young's 
reliance on his patronage, tended not only to 
heighten the temperature of his poetical enthusi- 


204 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


asm for Sir Robert Walpole, but also to turn his 
thoughts towards the Church again, as the second- 
best means of rising in the world. On the acces- 
sion of George the Second, Young found the same 
transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor, 
and celebrated them in a style of poetry previously 
unattempted by him, —the Pindaric ode, a poetic 
form which helped him to surpass himself in furi- 
ous bombasts. “ Ocean, an Ode: concluding with 
a Wish,” was the title of this piece. He after- 
wards pruned it, and cut off, amongst other things 
the concluding Wish expressing the yearning for 
humble retirement which, of course, had prompted 
him to the effusion; but we may judge of the 
rejected stanzas by the quality of those he has 
allowed to remain. For example, calling on Brit- 
ain’s dead mariners to rise and meet their “ coun- 
try’s full-blown glory,” in the person of the new 
King, he says :— 
“What powerful charm 
Can death disarm ? 
Your long, your iron slumbers break ? 
By Jove, by Fame, 
By George's name, 
Awake! awake! awake! awake!” 


Soon after this notable production, which was 
written with the ripe folly of forty-seven, Young 
took orders, and was presently appointed chaplain 
to the King. “ The Brothers,” his third and last 
tragedy, which was already in rehearsal, he now 
withdrew from the stage, and sought reputation in 
a way more accordant with the decorum of his 
new profession, by turning prose writer. But after 
publishing “A True Estimate of Human Life,” 
with a dedication to the Queen, as one of the 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 205 


“most shining representatives ” of God on earth, 
and a sermon entitled “An Apology for Princes ; 
or, the Reverence due to Government,” preached 
before the House of Commons, his Pindaric ambi- 
tion again seized him, and he matched his former 
ode by another, called “ Imperium Pelagi; a Naval 
Lyric; written in imitation of Pindar’s spirit, 
occasioned by his Majesty’s return from Hanover, 
1729, and the succeeding Peace.” Since he after- 
wards suppressed this second ode, we must suppose 
that it was rather worse than the first. Next 
came his two “Epistles to Pope, concerning the 
Authors of the Age,” remarkable for nothing but 
the audacity of affectation with which the most 
servile of poets professes to despise servility. 

In 1730 Young was presented by his college 
with the rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, 
and, in the following year, when he was just fifty, 
he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a widow with two 
children, who seems to have been in favour with 
Queen Caroline, and who probably had an income, 
—two attractions which doubtless enhanced the 
power of her other charms. Pastoral duties and 
domesticity probably cured Young of some bad 
habits; but, unhappily, they did not cure him 
either of flattery or of fustian. Three more odes 
followed, quite as bad as those of his bachelor- 
hood, except that in the third he announced the 
wise resolution of never writing another. It must 
have been about this time, since Young was now 
“turned of fifty,” that he wrote the letter to Mrs. 
Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk), George the 
Second’s mistress, which proves that he used other 
engines, besides Pindaric ones, in “ besieging Court 
favour.” The letter is too characteristic to be 
omitted : — 


206 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


Monpay Mornine. 
Mapam, —I know his majesty’s goodness to his ser- 
vants, and his love of justice in general, so well, that 
1 am confident, if His Majesty knew my case, I should 
not have any cause to despair of his gracious favour to 
me. 


Abilities. Want. 

Good Manners. Sufferings 

Service. and for his majesty. 
Age. Zeal 


These, madam, are the proper points of consideration 
in the person that humbly hopes his majesty’s favour. 

As to Abilities, all I can presume to say is, I have 
done the best I could to improve them. 

As to Good manners, I desire no favour, if any just 
objection lies against them. 

As for Service, I have been near seven years in his 
majesty’s, and never omitted any duty in it, which few 
can say. 

As for Age, I am turned of fifty. 

As for Want, I have no manner of preferment. 

As for Sufferings, 1 have lost £300 per ann. by 
being in his majesty’s service; as I have shown in a 
Representation which his majesty has been so good as 
to read and consider. 

As for Zeal, I have written nothing witbout showing 
my duty to their majesties, and some pieces are dedi- 
cated to them. 

This, madam, is the short and true state of my case. 
They that make their court to the ministers, and not 
their majesties, succeed better. If my case deserves 
some consideration, and you can serve me in it, I hum- 
bly hope and believe you will: Ishall, therefore, trouble 
you no farther; but beg leave to subscribe myself, with 
truest respect and gratitude, 

Yours, &e., 
EDWARD YOUNG. 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 207 


Pp. 8. Ihave some hope that my Lord Townshend is 
my friend; if therefore soon, and before he leaves the 
court, you had an opportunity of mentioning me, with 
that favour you have been so good to show, I think it 
would not fail of success; and if not, I shall owe you 


more than any. (Suffolk Letters, vol. 1. p. 289.) 


Young’s wife died in 1741, leaving him one 
son, born in 1733. That he had attached himselt 
strongly to her two daughters by her former mar- 
riage, there is better evidence in the report, men- 
tioned by Mrs. Montagu, of his practical kindness 
and liberality to the younger, than in his lamenta- 
tions over the elder as the Narcissa of the “ Night 
Thoughts.” Narcissa had died in 1735, shortly 
after marriage to Mr. Temple, the son of Lord 
Palmerston; and Mr. Temple himself, after a 
second marriage, died in 1740, a year before Lady 
Elizabeth Young. These, then, are the three 
deaths supposed to have inspired “The Com- 
plaint,” which forms the three first books of the 
“Night Thoughts” :— 


“ Insatiate archer, could not one suffice ? 
Thy shaft flew thrice: and thrice my peace was slain : 
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.” 


Since we find Young departing from the truth 
of dates, in order to heighten the effect of his 
calamity, or at least of his climax, we need not be 
surprised that he allowed his imagination great 
freedom in other matters besides chronology, and 
that the character of Philander can, by no process, be 
made to fit Mr. Temple. The supposition that the 
much-lectured Lorenzo, of the “ Night Thoughts, ” 
was Young’s own son, is hardly rendered more 


208 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


absurd by the fact that the poem was written 
when that son was a boy, than by the obvious 
artificiality of the characters Young introduces as 
targets for his arguments and rebukes. Among 
all the trivial efforts of conjectured criticism, there 
can hardly be one more futile than the attempt to 
discover the original of those pitiable lay-figures, 
the Lorenzos and Altamonts of Young’s didactic 
prose and poetry. His muse never stood face to 
face with a genuine, living human being; she 
would have been as much startled by such an 
encounter as a necromancer whose incantations 
and blue fire had actually conjured up a demon. 

The “ Night Thoughts ” appeared between 1741 
and 1745. Although he declares in them that he 
has chosen God for his “ patron ” henceforth, this 
is not at all to the prejudice of some half-dozen 
lords, duchesses, and right honourables, who have 
the privilege of sharing finely turned compliments 
with their co-patron. The line which closed the 
Second Night in the earlier editions, — 


“ Wits spare not Heaven, O Wilmington! — nor thee ”— 


is an intense specimen of that perilous juxtaposi- 
tion of ideas by which Young, in his incessant 
search after point and novelty, unconsciously con- 
verts his compliments into sarcasms; and _ his 
apostrophe to the moon, as more likely to be 
favourable to his song if he calls her “ fair Portland 
of the skies,” is worthy even of his Pindaric ravings. 
His ostentatious renunciation of worldly schemes, 
and especially of his twenty years’ siege of Court 
favour, are in the tone of one who retains some 
hope in the midst of his querulousness. 

He descended from the astronomical rhapsodies 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 209 


of his Ninth Night, published in 1745, to more 
terrestrial strains, in his “ Reflections on the Pub- 
lic Situation of the Kingdom,” dedicated to the 
Duke of Newcastle; but in this critical year we 
get a glimpse of him through a more prosaic and 
less refracting medium. He spent a part of the 
year at Tunbridge Wells; and Mrs. Montagu, who 
was there too, gives a very lively picture of the 
“divine doctor,” in her letters to the Duchess of 
Portland, on whom Young had bestowed the super- 
lative bombast to which we have recently alluded. 
We shall borrow the quotations from Dr. Doran, 
in spite of their length, because, to our mind, they 
present the most agreeable portrait we possess of 
Young :— 


‘‘T have great joy in Dr. Young, whom I disturbed 
inareverie. At first he started, then bowed, then fell 
back into a surprise; then began a speech, relapsed 
into his astonishment two or three times, forgot what 
he had been saying; began a new subject, and so went 
on. I told him your grace desired he would write 
longer letters; to which he cried ‘Ha!’ most emphati- 
cally, and I leave you to interpret what it meant. He 
has made a friendship with one person here, whom I 
believe you would not imagine to have been made for 
his bosom friend. You would, perhaps, suppose it was 
a bishop or dean, a prebend, a pious preacher, a clergy- 
man of exemplary life, or, if a layman, of most virtu- 
ous conversation, one that had paraphrased St. Matthew, 
or wrote comments on St. Paul. . . . You would not 
guess that this associate of the doctor’s was — old Cib- 
ber! Certainly in their religious, moral, and civil 
character, there is no relation; but in their dramatic 
capacity there is some.’””—[Mrs. Montagu was not 
aware that Cibber, whom Young had named not dis- 
paragingly in his Satires, was the brother of his old 

VOL. 11.— 14 


210 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


schoolfellow; but to return to our hero.] “The waters,” 
says Mrs. Montagu, ‘‘ have raised his spirits to a fine 
pitch, as your grace will imagine, when I tell you how 
sublime an answer he made to a very vulgar question. 
I asked him how Jong he stayed at the Wells: he said, 
‘As long as my rival stayed; —as long as the sun did.’ 
Among the visitors at the Wells were Lady Sunder- 
land (wife of Sir Robert Sutton) and her sister, Mrs. 
Tichborne. He did an admirable thing to Lady Sun- 
derland: on her mentioning Sir Robert Sutton, he asked 
her where Sir Robert’s lady was; on which we all 
laughed very heartily, and I brought him off, halt 
ashamed, to my lodgings, where, during breakfast, he 
assured me he had asked after Lady Sunderland, because 
he had a great honour for her; and that, having a re- 
spect for her sister, he designed to have inquired after 
her, if we had not put it out of his head by laughing 
at him. You must know Mrs. Tichborne sat next 
to Lady Sunderland. It would have been admirable 
to have had him finish his compliment in that man- 
ner. . . . His expressions all bear the stamp of nov- 
elty, and his thoughts of sterling sense. He practises 
a kind of philosophical abstinence. . . . He carried Mrs. 
Rolt and myself to Tunbridge, five miles from hence, 
where we were to see some fine old ruins. . . . First 
rode the doctor on a tall steed, decently caparisoned 
in dark gray; next, ambled Mrs. Rolt on a hackney 
horse; . : . then followed your humble servant on a 
milk-white palfrey. I rode on in safety, and at leisure 
to observe the company, especially the two figures that 
brought up the rear. The first was my servant, val- 
iantly armed with two uncharged pistols; the last was 
the doctor’s man, whose uncombed hair so resembled 
the mane of the horse he rode, one could not help ima- 
gining they were of kin, and wishing for the honour of 
the family, that they had had one comb betwixt them. 
On his head was a velvet cap, much resembling a black 
saucepan, and on his side hung a little basket. At last 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 211 


we arrived at the King’s Head, where the loyalty of the 
doctor induced him to alight; and then, knight-errant- 
like, he took his damsels from off their palfreys, and 
courteously handed us into the inn. ... The party 
returned to the Wells; and ‘the silver Cynthia held 
up her lamp in the heavens’ the while. The night 
silenced all but our divine doctor, who sometimes ut- 
tered things fit to be spoken ina season when all nature 
seems to be hushed and hearkening. I followed, gath- 
ering wisdom as I went, till I found, by my horse’s 
stumbling, that I was in a bad road, and that the blind 
was leading the blind. So I placed my servant between 
the doctor and myself; which he not perceiving, went 
on in a most philosophical strain, to the great admira- 
tion of my poor clown of a servant, who, not being 
wrought up to any pitch of enthusiasm, nor making 
any answer to all the fine things he heard, the doctor, 
wondering I was dumb, and grieving | was so stupid, 
looked round and declared his surprise.” 


Young’s oddity and absence of mind are gathered 
from other sources besides these stories of Mrs. 
Montagu’s, and gave rise to the report that he was 
the original of Fielding’s “ Parson Adams;” but 
this Croft denies, and mentions another Young, 
who really sat for the portrait, and who, we im- 
agine, had both more Greek and more genuine 
simplicity than the poet. His love of chatting 
with Colley Cibber was an indication that the old 
predilection for the stage survived, in spite of his 
emphatic contempt for “all joys but joys that 
never can expire;” and the production of “ The 
Brothers,” at Drury Lane in 1753, after a suppres- 
sion of fifteen years, was perhaps not entirely due 
to the expressed desire to give the proceeds to the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The 


212 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


author’s profits were not more than £400, —in 
those days a disappointing sum; and Young, as 
we learn from his friend Richardson, did not make 
this the limit of his donation, but gave a thousand 
guineas to the Society. “I had some talk with 
him,” says Richardson in one of his letters, “ about 
this great action. ‘I always,’ said he, ‘ intended 
to do something handsome for the Society. Had I 
deferred it to my demise, I should have given away 
my son’s money. AI] the world are inclined to 
pleasure; could I have given myself a greater by 
disposing of the sum to a different use, I should 
have done it.’” Surely he took his old friend 
Richardson for Lorenzo! 

His next work was “ The Centaur not Fabulous; 
in Six Letters to a Friend, on the Life in Vogue,” 
which reads very much like the most objurgatory 
parts of the “ Night Thoughts ” reduced to prose. 
It is preceded by a preface which, though addressed 
toa lady, is, in its denunciations of vice, as grossly 
indecent and almost as flippant as the epilogues 
written by “friends,” which he allowed to be re- 
printed after his tragedies in the latest edition of 
his works. We like much better than “ The Cen- 
taur,” “Conjectures on Original Composition, ” 
written in 1759, for the sake, he says, of commu- 
nicating to the world the well-known anecdote 
about Addison’s death-bed and, with the exception 
of his poem on Resignation, the last thing he ever 
published. 

The estrangement from his son which must have 
embittered the later years of his life, appears to 
have begun not many years after the mother’s 
death. On the marriage of her second daughter, 
who had previously presided over Young’s house- 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 213 


hold, a Mrs. Hallows, understood to be a woman 
of discreet age, and the daughter (or widow) of a 
clergyman who was an old friend of Young’s, be- 
came housekeeper at Welwyn. Opinions about 
ladies are apt to differ. “Mrs. Hallows wasa 
woman of piety, improved by reading,” says one 
witness. “She was a very coarse woman,” says 
Dr. Johnson; and we shall presently find some 
indirect evidence that her temper was perhaps not 
quite so much improved as her piety. Servants, 
it seems, were not fond of remaining long in the 
house with her; a satirical curate, named Kidgell, 
hints at “drops of juniper” taken as a cordial 
(but perhaps he was spiteful, and a teetotaler) ; 
and Young’s son is said to have told his father 
that “an old man should not resign himself 
to the management of anybody.” The result 
was, that the son was banished from home for 
the rest of his father’s lifetime, though Young 
seems never to have thought of disinheriting 
him. 

Our latest glimpses of the aged poet are derived 
from certain letters of Mr. Jones, his curate, — 
letters preserved in the British Museum, and 
happily made accessible to common mortals in 
Nichols’s “ Anecdotes.” Mfr. Jones was a man of 
some literary activity and ambition, —a collector 
of interesting documents, and one of those con- 
cerned in the “ Free and Candid Disquisitions, ” 
the design of which was “ to point out such things 
in our ecclesiastical establishment as want to be 
reviewed and amended.” On these and kindred 
subjects he corresponded with.Dr. Birch, occasion- 
ally troubling him with queries and manuscripts. 
We have a respect for Mr. Jones. Unlike any 


214 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


person who ever troubled ws with queries or manu- 
scripts, he mitigates the infliction by such gifts as 
“a fat pullet,” wishing he “had anything better 
to send; but this depauperizing vicarage [of Alcon- 
bury] too often checks the freedom and forwardness 
of my mind.” Another day comes a “ pound can- 
ister of tea;” another, a “ young fatted goose.” 
Clearly Mr. Jones was entirely unlike your literary 
correspondents of the present day; he forwarded 
manuscripts, but he had “ bowels,” and forwarded 
poultry too. His first letter from Welwyn is 
dated June, 1759, not quite six years before 
Young’s death. In June, 1762, he expresses a 
wish to go to London “this summer, But,” he 
Continues — 


if 


‘‘My time and pains are almost continually taken 
up here, and . . . I have been, I now find, a consider- 
able loser, upon the whole, by continuing here so long. 
The consideration of this, and the inconveniences I 
sustained, and do still experience, from my late illness, 
obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor [Young] 
with my case, and to assure him that I plainly per- 
ceived the duty and confinement here to be too much 
for me; for which reason I must, I said, beg to be at 
hhberty to resign my charge at Michaelmas. I began 
to give him these notices in February, when I was very 
ill; and now I perceive, by what he told me the other 
day, that he is in some difficulty: for which reason he 
is at last, he says, resolved to advertise, and even, 
which is much wondered at, to raise the salary con- 
siderably higher. (What he allowed my predecessors 
was £20) per annum, and now he proposes £50, as he 
tellsme.) I never asked him to raise it for me, though 
I well knew it was not equal to the duty; nor did I say 
a word about myself when he lately suggested to me 
his intentions upon this subject.”’ 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 215 


In a postscript to this letter, he says :— 


‘«<T may mention to you farther, as a friend that may 
be trusted, that, in all likelihood, the poor old gentle- 
man will not find it a very easy matter, unless by dint 
of money, and force upon himself, to procure a man 
that he can like for his next curate, nor one that will 
stay with him so long as I have done. Then, his great 
age will recur to people’s thoughts; and if he has any 
foibles, either in temper or conduct, they will be sure 
not to be forgotten on this occasion ky those who know 
him; and those who do not, will probably be on their 
guard. On these and the like considerations, it is by 
no means an eligible office to be seeking out for a curate 
for him, as he has several times wished me to do; and 
would, if he knew that I am now writing to you, wish 
your assistance also. But my best friends here, who 
well foresee the probable consequences, and wish me well, 
earnestly dissuade me from complying; and I will 
decline the office with as much decency as I can: but 
high salary will, I suppose, fetch in somebody or other ; 
soon.” 


In the following July he writes :— 


‘The old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you 
freely) seems to me to be in a pretty odd way of late, 
—moping, dejected, self-willed, and as if surrounded 
with some perplexing circumstances. Though I visit 
him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very 
little to his affairs, not choosing to be a party concerned, 
especially in cases of so critical and tender a nature. 
There is much mystery in almost all his temporal 
affairs, as well as in many of his speculative theories. 
Whoever lives in this neighbourhood to see his exit, 
will probably see and hear some very strange things. 
Time will show, —I am afraid, not greatly to his credit. 
There is thought to be an irremovable obstruction to 
his happiness within his walls, as well as another 


216 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


without them; but the former is the more powerful, 
and like to continue so. He has this day beer trying 
anew to engage me to stay with him. No lucrative 
views can tempt me to sacrifice my liberty or my health 
to such measures as are proposed here. Nor do I like 
to have to do with persons whose word and honour can- 
not be depended on. So much for this very odd and 
unhappy topic.’’ 


In August, Mr. Jones’s tone is slightly modified. 
Earnest entreaties, not lucrative considerations, 
have induced him to cheer the Doctor’s dejected 
heart by remaining at Welwyn some time longer. 
The Doctor is, “in various respects, a very un- 
happy man,” and few know so much of these 
respects as Mr. Jones. In September he recurs to 
the subject : — 


‘¢ My ancient gentleman here is still full of trouble: 
which moves my concern, though it moves only the 
secret laughter of many, and some untoward surmises 
in disfavour of him and his household. The loss of a 
very large sum of money (about £200) is talked of; 
whereof this vill and neighbourhood is full. Some dis- 
believe; others say, ‘ J¢ is no wonder, where about 
eighteen or more servants are sometimes taken and dis- 
missed in the course of a year.” The gentleman him- 
self is allowed by all to be far more harmless and easy 
in his family than some one else who hath too much 
the lead in it. This, among others, was one reason 
for my late motion to quit.” 


No other mention of Young’s affairs occurs until 
April 2, 1765, when he says that Dr. Young is 
very ill, attended by two physicians. 

‘‘Having mentioned this young gentleman [Dr. 
Young’s son], I would acquaint you next, that he came 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 


tN 


17 


hither this morning, having been sent for, as I am 
told, by the direction of Mrs. Hallows. Indeed, she 
intimated to me as much herself. And, if this be so, L 
must say that it is one of the most prudent acts she 
ever did, or could have done in such a case as this; as 
it may prove a means of preventing much confusion 
after the death of the Doctor. I have had some little 
discourse with the son: he seems much affected, and 
I believe really is so. He earnestly wishes his father 
might be pleased to ask after him; for you must know 
he has not yet done this, nor is, in my opinion, like to 
do it. And it has been said, farther, that upon a late 
application made to him on the behalf of his son, he 
desired that no more might be said to him about it. 
How true this may be I cannot as yet be certain; all I 
shall say is, it seems not improbable. . . . I heartily 
wish the ancient man’s heart may prove tender towards 
hisson; though, knowing him so well, I can scarce hope 
to hear such desirable news.” 


Eleven days later he writes : — 


‘‘T have now the pleasure to acquaint you that the 
late Dr. Young, though he had for many years kept 
his son at a distance from him, yet has now at last left 
him all his possessions, after the payment of certain 
legacies; so that the young gentleman, who bears a 
fair character and behaves well, as far as I can hear or 
see, will, I hope, soon enjoy and make a prudent use 
of a handsome fortune. ‘The father, on his death-bed, 
and since my return from London, was applied to in 
the tenderest manner, by one of his physicians and by 
another person, to admit the son into his presence, — 
to make submission, intreat forgiveness, and obtain his 
blessing. As to an interview with his son, he inti- 
mated that he chose to decline it, as his spirits were 
then low and his nerves weak. With regard to the 
next particular, he said, ‘I heartily forgive him ;’ and 
upon mention of this last, he gently lifted up his hand, 


218 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


and letting it gently fall, pronounced these words, 
‘God bless him!’ . . . I know it will give you plea- 
sure to be farther informed that he was pleased to make 
respectful mention of me in his will, — expressing his 
satisfaction in my care of his parish, bequeathing to 
me a handsome legacy, and appointing me to he one 
of his executors.” 


So far Mr. Jones, in his confidential correspond- 
ence with a “ friend who may be trusted.” In a 
letter communicated apparently by him to the 
“Gentleman’s Magazine,” seven years later, — 
namely, in 1782, —on the appearance of Croft's 
biography of Young, we find him speaking of “ the 
ancient gentleman,” in a tone of reverential eulogy 
quite at variance with the free comments we have 
just quoted. But the Rev. John Jones was proba- 
bly of opinion with Mrs. Montagu, whose contem- 
porary and retrospective letters are also set in a 
different key, that “the interests of religion were 
connected with the character of a man so distin- 
guished for piety as Dr. Young.” At all events, 
a subsequent quasi-official statement weighs noth- 
ing as evidence against contemporary, spontaneous, 
and confidential hints. 

To Mrs. Hallows, Young left a legacy of £1,000, 
with the request that she would destroy all his 
manuscripts. This final request, from some un- 
known cause, was not complied with; and among 
the papers he left behind him was the following 
letter from Archbishop Secker, which probably 
marks the date of his latest effort after preferment. 


DEANERY OF St. PAuL’s, July 8, 1758. 
Goop Dr. Youne,—I have long wondered that 


more suitable notice of your great merit hath not been 
taken by persons in power. But how to remedy the 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 219 


emission I see not. No encouragement hath ever 
been given me to mention things of this uature to his 
Majesty. And therefore, in all likelihood, the only 
consequence of doing it would be weakening the little 
influence which else I may possibly have on some other 
occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set you 
above the need of advancement ; and your sentiments 
above that concern for it, on your own account, which 
on that of the public is sincerely felt by 
Your loving Brother, 
Tuo. Cant. 


The “ loving Brother’s ” irony is severe! 

Perhaps the least questionable testimony to the 
better side of Young’s character is that of Bishop 
Hildesley, who, as the vicar of a parish near 
Welwyn, had been Young's neighbour for upwards 
of twenty years. The affection of the clergy for 
each other, we have observed, 1s, like that of the 
fair sex, not at all of a blind and infatuated kind ; 
and we may therefore the rather believe them 
when they give each other any extra-official praise. 
Bishop Hildesley, then writing of Young to 
Richardson, says :— 


‘‘The impertinence of my frequent visits to him was 
amply rewarded; forasmuch as, I can truly say, he 
never received me but with agreeable open compla- 
cency; and I never left him but with profitable pleasure 
and improvement. He was one or other, the most 
modest, the most patient of contradiction, and the most 
informing and entertaining I ever conversed with, — at 
least, of any man who had so just pretensions to perti- 
nacity and reserve.’’ 


Mr. Langton, however, who was also a frequent 
visitor of Young’s, informed Boswell — 


220 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


‘That there was an air of benevolence in his man- 
ner; but that he could obtain from him less information 
than he had hoped to receive from one who had lived 
so much in intercourse with the brightest men of what 
had been called the Augustan Age of England; and that 
he showed a degree of eager curiosity concerning the 
common occurrences that were then passing, which 
appeared somewhat remarkable in a man of such intel- 
lectual stores, of such an advanced age, and who had re- 
tired from life with declared disappointment in his 
expectations.” 


The same substance, we know, will exhibit 
different qualities under different tests; and, 
after all, imperfect reports of individual impres- 
sions, whether immediate or traditional, are a 
very frail basis on which to build our opinion of a 
man. One’s character may be very indifferently 
mirrored in the mind of the most intimate neigh- 
bour; it all depends on the quality of that gentle- 
man’s reflecting surface. 

But, discarding any inferences from such uncer- 
tain evidence, the outline of Young’s character is 
too distinctly traceable in the well-attested facts 
of his life, and yet more in the self-betrayal that 
runs through all his works, for us to fear that our 
general estimate of him may be false. For, while 
no poet seems less easy and spontaneous than 
Young, no poet discloses himself more completely. 
Men’s minds have no hiding-place out of them- 
selves; their affectations do but betray another 
phase of their nature. And if, in the present view 
of Young, we seem to be more intent on laying 
bare unfavourable facts than on shrouding them in 
“charitable speeches,” it is not because we have 
any irreverential pleasure in turning men’s charac- 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 221 


ters “the seamy side without,” but because we see 
no great advantage in considering a man as he was 
not. Young’s biographers and critics have usually 
set out from the position that he was a great reli- 
gious teacher, and that his poetry is morally sub- 
lime; and they have toned down his failings into 
harmony with their conception of the divine and 
the poet. For our own part, we set out from pre- 
cisely the opposite conviction, —namely, that the 
religious and moral spirit of Young’s poetry is low 
and false; and we think it of some importance to 
show that the “ Night Thoughts ” are the reflex of 
a mind in which the higher human sympathies 
were inactive. This judgment is entirely opposed 
to our youthful predilections and enthusiasm. 
The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment lingers 
about many a page of the “ Night Thoughts,” and 
even of the “ Last Day,” giving an extrinsic charm 
to passages of stilted rhetoric and false sentiment ; 
but the sober and repeated reading of maturer 
years has convinced us that it would hardly be 
possible to find a more typical instance than 
Young’s poetry, of the mistake which substitutes 
interested obedience for sympathetic emotion, and 
baptizes egoism as religion. 

Pope said of Young, that he had “ much of a 
sublime genius without common sense.” The 
deficiency Pope meant to indicate was, we imagine, 
moral rather than intellectual; it was the want of 
that fine sense of what is fitting in speech and 
action, which is often eminently possessed by men 
and women whose intellect is of a very common 
order, but who have the sincerity and dignity 
which can never coexist with the selfish preoccu- 
pations of vanity or interest. This was the “ com- 
mon sense” in which Young was conspicuously 


202 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


deficient; and it was partly owing to this defi- 
ciency that his genius, waiting to be determined 
by the highest prize, fluttered uncertainly from 
effort to effort, until, when he was more than 
sixty, it suddenly spread its broad wing, and 
soared so as to arrest the gaze of other generations 
besides his own. For he had no versatility of 
faculty to mislead him. The “ Night Thoughts ” 
only differ from his previous works in the degree 
and not in the kind of power they manifest. 
Whether he writes prose or poetry, rhyme or blank 
verse, dramas, satires, odes, or meditations, we see 
everywhere the same Young, —the same narrow 
circle of thoughts, the same love of abstractions, 
the same telescopic view of human things, the 
same appetency towards antithetic apothegm and 
rhapsodic climax. The passages that arrest us in 
his tragedies are those in which he anticipates 
some fine passage in the “ Night Thoughts,” and 
where his characters are only transparent shadows, 
through which we see the bewigged embonpoint of 
the didactic poet, excogitating epigrams or ecstatic 
soliloquies by the light of a candle fixed in a skull. 
Thus in “ The Revenge,” Alonzo, in the conflict of 
jealousy and love that at once urges and forbids 
him to murder his wife, says, — 


“This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun, 
Those skies, through which it rolls, must all have end. 
What then is man? The smallest part of nothing. 
Day buries day; month, month ; and year, the year! 
Our life is but a chain of many deaths. 
Can then Death’s self be feared? Our life much rather : 
Life is the desert, life the solitude ; 
Death joins us to the great majority : 
’T is to be born to Plato and to Cesar ; 
°T is to be great forever ; 
’T is pleasure, ’*t is ambition, then, to die.” 


* 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 223 


His prose writings all read like the “ Night 
Thoughts,” either diluted into prose, or not yet 
crystallized into poetry. For example, in his 
“Thoughts for Age,’ he says, — 


‘Though we stand on its awful brink, such our 
leaden bias to the world, we turn our faces the wrong 
way ; we are still looking on our old acquaintance, 
Time, though now so wasted and reduced that we can 
see little more of him than his wings and his scythe: 
our age enlarges his wings to our imagination ; and 
our fear of death, his scythe ; as Time himself grows 
less. His consumption is deep; his annihilation is at 


hand.”’ 


This is a dilution of the magnificent image : — 


‘¢ Time in advance behind him hides his wings, 
And seems to creep decrepit with his age. 
Behold him when past by! What then is seen 
But his proud pinions, swifter than the winds ?” 


Again :— 


‘A requesting Omnipotence ? What can stun and 
confound thy reason more ? What more can ravish and 
exalt thy heart? It cannot but ravish and exalt ; it 
cannot but gloriously disturb and perplex thee, to take 
in all that thought suggests. Thou child of the dust ! 
Thou speck of misery and sin! How abject thy weak- 
ness, how great is thy power! Thou crawler on earth, 
and possible (I was about to say) controller of the 
skies! Weigh, and weigh well, the wondrous truths 
I have in view : which cannot be weighed too much ; 
which the more they are weighed, amaze the more ; 
which to have supposed, before they were revealed, 
would have been as great madness, and to have pre- 
sumed on as great sin, as it is now madness and sin not 
to believe.”’ 


224 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


Even in his Pindaric odes, in which he made the 
most violent efforts against Nature, he is still neither 
more nor less than the Young of the “Last Day,” 
emptied and swept of his genius, and possessed by 
seven demons of fustian and bad rhyme. Even 
here his “Ercles’ Vein” alternates with his moral 
platitudes, and we have the perpetual text of the 
“Night Thoughts ”:— 


“Gold, pleasure buys ; 
But pleasure dies, 
For soon the gross fruition cloys ; 
Though raptures court, 
The sense is short; 
But virtue kindles living joys, — 


“ Joys felt alone! 
Joys asked of none! 
Which Time’s and Fortune’s arrows miss : 
Joys that subsist, 
Though fates resist, 
An unprecarious, endless bliss! 
“ Unhappy they ! 
And falsely gay ! 
Who bask forever in success ; 
A constant feast 
Quite palls the taste, 
And long enjoyment is distress.” 


In the “Last Day,” again, which is the earliest 
thing he wrote, we have an anticipation of all his 
ereatest faults and merits. Conspicuous among the , 
faults is that attempt to exalt our conceptions of 
Deity by vulgar images and comparisons, which is 
so offensive in the later “Night Thoughts.” In a 
burst of prayer and homage to God, called forth by 
the contemplation of Christ coming to Judgment, he 
asks, “ Who brings the change of the seasons?” and 
answers, — 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 225 


“Not the great Ottoman, or Greater Czar ; 
Not Europe’s arbitress of peace and war!” 


Conceive the soul in its most solemn moments, 
assuring God that it does’nt place his power below 
that of Louis Napoleon or Queen Victoria! 

But in the midst of uneasy rhymes, inappropriate 
imagery, vaulting sublimity that o’erleaps itself, 
and vulgar emotions, we have in this poem an 
occasional flash of genius, a touch of simple gran- 
deur, which promises as much as Young ever 
achieved. Describing the on-coming of the dissolu- 
tion of all things, he says, — 


“No sun in radiant glory shines on high ; 
No light but from the terrors of the sky.” 


And again, speaking of great armies, — 


“ Whose rear lay wrapt in night, while breaking dawn 
Roused the broad front, and called the battle on.” 


And this wail of the lost souls is fine: — 


“And this for sin ? 
Could I offend if 1 had never been ? 
But still increased the senseless, happy mass, 
Flowed in the stream, or shivered in the grass ? 
Father of mercies! Why from silent earth 
Didst thou awake and curse me into birth? 
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, 
And make a thankless present of thy light ? 
Push into being a reverse of thee, 
And animate a clod with misery ?” 


But it is seldom in Young’s rhymed poems that 
the effect of a felicitous thought or image 1s not 
counteracted by our sense of the constraint he 
suffered from the necessities of rhyme, — that 


“Gothic demon,” as he afterwards called it, “which 
VOL. 11, — 15 


226 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


modern poetry tasting, became mortal.” In rela- 
tion to his own power, no one will question the 
truth of his dictum, that “blank verse is verse un- 
fallen, uncurst ; verse reclaimed, reinthroned in the 
true language of the gods; who never thundered nor 
suffered their Homer to thunder in rhyme.” His 
want of mastery in rhyme is especially a drawback 
on the effects of his satires; for epigrams and witti- 
cisms are peculiarly susceptible to the intrusion of a 
superfluous word, or to an inversion which implies 
constraint. Here,even more than elsewhere, the art 
that conceals art is an absolute requisite, and to have 
a witticism presented to us in limping or cumbrous 
rhythm is as counteractive to any electrifying effect 
as to see the tentative grimaces by which a comedian 
prepares a grotesque countenance. We discern the 
process, instead of being startled by the result. 

This is one reason why the Satires, read serzatim, 
have a flatness to us which, when we afterwards 
read picked passages, we are inclined to disbelieve 
in, and to attribute to some deficiency im our own 
mood. But there are deeper reasons for that dis- 
satisfaction. Young is nota satirist of a high order. 
His satire has neither the terrible vigour, the lacer- 
ating energy, of genuine indignation, nor the humour 
which owns loving fellowship with the poor human 
nature it laughs at; nor yet the personal bitterness 
which, asin Pope’s characters of Sporus and Atticus, 
ensures those living touches by virtue of which 
the individual and particular in Art becomes the 
universal and immortal. Young could never de- 
scribe a real, complex human being; but what he 
could do, with eminent success, was to describe with 
neat and finished point obvious types of manners 
rather than of character, — to write cold and clever 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 227 


epigrams on personified vices and absurdities. There 
is no more emotion in his satire than if he were 
turning witty verses on a waxen image of Cupid, or 
alady’s glove. He has none of those felicitous 
epithets, none of those pregnant lines, by which 
Pope’s Satires have enriched the ordinary speech 
of educated men. Youneg’s wit will be found in 
almost every instance to consist in that antithetic 
combination of ideas which, of all the forms of wit, 
is most within reach of clever effort. In his gravest 
arguments, as well as in his lightest satire, one 
might imagine that he had set himself to work out 
the problem, how much antithesis might be got out 
of a given subject. And there he completely suc- 
ceeds. His neatest portraits are all wrought on 
this plan. Narcissus, for example, who 


«“Omits no duty; nor can Envy say 
He missed, these many years, the Church or Play : 
He makes no noise in Parliament, ’tis true ; 
But pays his debts, and visit when ’t is due ; 
His character and gloves are ever clean, 
And then he can out-bow the bowing Dean; 
A smile eternal on his lip he wears, ~ 
Which equally the wise and worthless shares. 
In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief, 
Patient of idleness beyond belief, 
Most charitably lends the town his face 
For ornament in every public place ; 
As sure as cards he to th’ assembly comes, 
And is the furniture of drawing-rooms : 
When Ombre calls, his hand and heart are free, 
And, joined to two, he fails not —to make three; 
Narcissus is the glory of his race ; 
For who does nothing with a better grace ? 
To deck my list by nature were designed 
Such shining expletives of human kind, 
Who want, while through blank life they dream along, 
Sense to be right and passion to be wrong.” 


228 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


It is but seldom that we find a touch of that 
easy slyness which gives an additional zest to sur- 
prise; but here is an instance :— 

‘See Tityrus, with merriment possest, 
Is burst with laughter ere he hears the jest ; 
What need he stay, for when the joke is o’er, 
His teeth will be no whiter than before.” 


Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with 
a psychological mistake as the basis of his satire, 
attributing all forms of folly to one passion, — the 
love of fame, or vanity, —a much grosser mistake, 
indeed, than Pope’s exaggeration of the extent to 
which the “ ruling passion ” determines conduct in 
the individual. Not that Young is consistent in 
his mistake. He sometimes implies no more than 
what is the truth, —that the love of fame is the 
cause, not of all follies, but of many. 

Young’s satires on women are superior to Pope's, 
which is only saying that they are superior to 
Pope’s greatest failure. We can more frequently 
pick out a couplet as successful than an entire 
sketch. Of the too emphatic Syrena he says :— 


‘‘ Her judgment just, her sentence 1s too strong ; 
Because she’s right, she ’s ever in the wrong.” 


Of the diplomatic Julia : — 


‘‘ For her own breakfast she ’1l project a scheme, 
Nor take her tea without a stratagem.” 


Of Lyce, the old painted coquette : — 


“Tn vain the cock has summoned sprites away ; 
She walks at noon, and blasts the bloom of day.” 


Of the nymph who, “ gratis, clears religious 
mysteries :” — 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 229 


‘6’T is hard, too, she who makes no use but chat 
Of her religion, should be barred in that.” 


The description of the literary belle, Daphne, 
well prefaces that of Stella, admired by Johnson : 


«‘ With legs tossed high, on her sophee she sits, 
Vouchsafing audience to contending wits: 
Of each performance she’s the final test; 
One act read o’er, she prophesies the rest; 
And then, pronouncing with decisive alr, 
Fully convinces all the town — she’s favr. 
Had lonely Daphne Heeatessa’s face, 
How would her elegance of taste decrease! 
Some ladies’ judgment in their features lies, 
And all their genius sparkles in their eyes. 
But hold, she cries, lampooner ! have a care! 
Must I want common sense because I’m fair ? 
Oh, no ; see Stella : her eyes shine.as bright 
As if her tongue was never in the right ; 
And yet what real learning, judgment, fire ! 
She seems inspired, and can herself inspire. 
How then (if malice ruled not all the fair) 
Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear ?”? 


After all, when we have gone through Young’s 
seven Satires, we seem to have made but an indif- 
ferent meal. They are a sort of fricassee, with 
some little solid meat in them, and yet the flavour 
is not always piquant. It is curious to find him, 
when he pauses a moment from his satiric sketch- 
ing, recurring to his old platitudes — 


“Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine ? 
Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine ? 
- Wisdom to gold prefer :” — 


platitudes which he seems inevitably to fall into, 
for the same reason that some men are constantly 
asserting their contempt for criticism, — because he 
felt the opposite so keenly. 


230 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


The outburst of genius in the earlier books of 
the “Night Thoughts” is the more remarkable, 
that, in the interval between them and the Satires, 
he had produced nothing but his Pindaric odes, in 
which he fell far below the level of his previous 
works. Two sources of this sudden strength were 
the freedom of blank verse and the presence of a 
genuine emotion. Most persons, in speaking of 
the “ Night Thoughts,” have in their minds only 
the two or three first Nights; the majority of 
readers rarely getting beyond these, unless, as 
Wilson says, they “ have but few books, are poor, 
and live in the country.” And in these earlier 
Nights there is enough genuine sublimity and 
genuine sadness to bribe us into too favourable 
a judgment of them as a whole. Young had 
only a very few things to say or sing, — such 
as that life is vain, that death is imminent, 
that man is immortal, that virtue is wisdom, 
that friendship is sweet, and that the source 
of virtue is the contemplation of death and 
immortality, —and even in his two first Nights 
he had said almost all he had to say in his finest 
manner. Through these first outpourings of “ com- 
plaint ” we feel that the poet is really sad, that 
the bird is singing over a rifled nest; and we bear 
with his morbid picture of the world and of life, 
as the Job-like lament of 2 man whom “ the hand 
of God hath touched.” Death has carried away 
his best-beloved; and that “ silent land,” whither 
they are gone, has more reality for the desolate 
one than this world, which is empty of their 
love: — 

‘¢ This is the desert, this the solitude ; 
How populous, how vital, is the grave!” 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 231 


Joy died with the loved one :— 


‘“‘'The disenchanted earth 
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers ? 
Her golden mountains, where? All darkened down 
To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears : 
The great magician’s dead /” 


Under the pang of parting, it seems to the be- 
reaved man as if love were only a nerve to suffer 
with, and he sickens at the thought of every joy 
of which he must one day say, “2 was.” In its 
unreasoning anguish, the soul rushes to the idea 
of perpetuity as the one element of bliss: — 


“* O ye blest scenes of permanent delight ! 
Could ye, so rich in rapture, fear an end, — 
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy, 
And quite unparadise the realms of light.” 


In a man under the immediate pressure of a 
great sorrow, we tolerate morbid exaggerations ; 
we are prepared to see him turn away a weary eye 
from sunlight and flowers and sweet human faces, 
as if this rich and glorious life had no significance 
but as a preliminary of death; we do not criticise 
his views, we compassionate his feelings. And so 
it is with Young in these earlier Nights. There is 
already some artificiality even in his erief, and 
feeiing often slides into rhetoric; but through it 
all we are thrilled with the unmistakable cry of 
pain, which makes us tolerant of egoism and 
hyperbole : — 


“Tn every varied posture, place, and hour, 
How widowed every thought of every joy! 
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace ! 
Through the dark postern of time long elapsed 
Led softly, by the stillness of the night, — 


232 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


Led like a murderer (and such it proves !) 

Strays (wretched rover !) o’er the pleasing past, — 
In quest of wretchedness, perversely strays ; 

And finds all desert now ; and meets the ghosts 
Of my departed joys.” 


' But when he becomes didactic rather than com- 
plaining, — when he ceases to sing his sorrows, 
and begins to insist on his opinions, — when.that 
distaste for life, which we pity as a transient feel- 
ing, is thrust upon us as a theory, we become 
perfectly cool and critical, and are not in the least 
inclined to be indulgent to false views and selfish 
sentiments. 

Seeing that we are about to be severe on Young’s 
failings and failures, we ought, if a reviewer's 
space were elastic, to dwell also on his merits, — 
on the startling vigour of his imagery, on the 
occasional grandeur of his thought, on the piquant 
force of that grave satire into which his medita- 
tions continually run. But, since our limits are 
rigorous, we must content ourselves with the less 
agreeable half of the critic’s duty; and we may 
the rather do so, because it would be difficult to 
say anything new of Young in the way of admi- 
ration, while we think there are many salutary 
lessons remaining to be drawn from his faults. 

One of the most striking characteristics of 
Young is his radical insincerity as a poetic artist. 
This, added to the thin and artificial texture of 
his wit, is the true explanation of the paradox, — 
that a poet who is often inopportunely witty has 
the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The 
source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking 
for a criterion the true qualities of the object de- 
scribed, or the emotion expressed. The grandilo- 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 233 


quent man is never bent on saying what he feels 
or what he sees, but on producing a certain effect 
on his audience; hence he may float away into 
utter inanity without meeting any criterion to 
arrest him. Here lies the distinction between 
erandiloquence and genuine fancy or bold imagi- 
nativeness. The fantastic or the boldly imagina- 
tive poet may be ‘as sincere as the most realistic ; 
he is true to his own sensibilities or inward vision, 
and in his wildest flights he never breaks loose 
from his criterion, —the truth of his own mental 
state. Now, this disruption of language from 
genuine thought and feeling 1s what we are con- 
stantly detecting in Young; and his insincerity is 
the more likely to betray him into absurdity, be- 
cause he habitually treats of abstractions, and not 
of concrete objects or specific emotions. He des- 
cants perpetually on virtue, religion, “the good 
man,” life, death, immortality, eternity, — subjects 
which are apt to give a factitious grandeur to 
empty wordiness. When a poet floats in the empy- 
rean, and only takes a bird’s-eye view of the earth, 
some people accept the mere fact of his soaring for 
sublimity, and mistake his dim vision of earth for 
proximity to heaven. Thus, — 


“ His hand the good man fixes on the skies, 
And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl,” 


may, perhaps, pass for sublime with some readers. 
But pause a moment to realize the image, and the 
monstrous absurdity of a man’s grasping the skies, 
and hanging habitually suspended there, while he 
contemptuously bids the earth roll, warns you that 
no genuine feeling could have suggested so unnatu- 
ral a conception. 


234 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


Again, — 


‘¢ See the man immortal: him, I mean, 
Who lives as such ; whose heart, full bent on Heaven, 
Leans all that way, his bias to the stars.”’ 


This is worse than the previous example; for 
you can at least form some imperfect conception 
of a man hanging from the skies, though the posi- 
tion strikes you as uncomfortable and of no par- 
ticular use; but you are utterly unable to imagine 
how his heart can lean towards the stars. Hxam- 
ples of such vicious imagery, resulting from 
insincerity, may be found, perhaps, in almost 
every page of the “ Night Thoughts.” But simple 
assertions or aspirations, undisguised by imagery, 
are often equally false. No writer whose rhetoric 
was checked by the slightest truthful intentions 
could have said, — 


*¢ An eye of awe and wonder Jet me roll, 
And roll forever.” 


Abstracting the more poetical associations with the 
eye, this is hardly less absurd than if he had 
wished to stand forever with his mouth open. 
Again — 
“ Far beneath 
A soul immortal is a mortal joy.” 


Haypily for human nature, we are sure no man 
really believes that. Which of us has the impiety 
not to feel that our souls are only too narrow for 
the joy of looking into the trusting eyes of our 
children, of reposing on the love of a husband or a 
wife, nay, of listening to the divine voice of 
music, or watching the calm brightness of autum- 
nal afternoons? But Young could utter this falsity 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS, 235 


without detecting it, because, when he spoke of 
“mortal joys,” he rarely had in his mind any 
object to which he could attach sacredness. He 
was thinking of bishoprics and benelices, of smil- 
ing monarchs, patronizing prime-ministers, and a 
“much indebted muse.” Of anything between 
these and eternal bliss, he was but rarely and 
moderately conscious. Often, indeed, he sinks very 
much below even the bishopric, and seems to have 
no notion of earthly pleasure, but such as breathes 
gaslight and the fumes of wine. His picture of 
life is precisely such as you would expect from a 
man who has risen from his bed at two o’clock in 
the afternoon with a headache, and a dim re- 
membrance that he has added to his “debts of 
honour ” :— 
‘“ What wretched repetition cloys us here! 
What periodic potions for the sick, 
Distempered bodies and distempered minds ?” 


And then he flies off to his usual antithesis : — 


“Tn an eternity what scenes shall strike ! 


: Adventures thicken, novelties surprise !” 


“Farth ” means lords and levees, duchesses and 
Delilahs, South-Sea dreams and illegal percentage ; 
and the only things distinctly preferable to these 
are eternity and the stars. Deprive Young of this 
antithesis, and more than half his eloquence would 
be shrivelled up. Place him on a breezy common, 
where the furze is in its golden bloom, where chil- 
dren are playing, and horses are standing in the 
sunshine with fondling necks, and he would have 
nothing to say. Here are neither depths of guilt 
nor heights of glory; and we doubt whether in 


236 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


such a scene he would be able to pay his usual 
compliment to the Creator :— 


““Where’er I turn, what claim on all applause! ” 


It is true that he sometimes — not often — 
speaks of virtue as capable of sweetening life, as 
well as of taking the sting from death and winning 
heaven ; and, lest we should be guilty of any un- 
irae to him, we will quote the two passages 
which convey this sentiment the most explicitly. 
In the one he gives Lorenzo this excellent recipe 
for obtaining cheerfulness : — 


“Go, fix some weighty truth ; 
Chain down some passion ; do some generous good ; 
Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile ; 
Correct thy friend; befriend thy greatest foe; 
Or, with warm heart, and confidence divine, 
Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who made thee.” 


The other passage is vague but beautiful, and 
its music has murmured in our minds for many 


years : — 

** The cuckoo seasons sing 

The same dull note to such as nothing prize 

But what those seasons from the teeming earth 

To doting sense indulge. But nobler minds, 

Which relish fruit unripened by the sun, 

Make their days various ; various as the dyes 

On the dove’s neck, which wanton in his rays. 

On minds of dove-like innocence possessed, 

On lightened minds that bask in Virtue’s beams, 

Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves 

In that for which they long, for which they live. 

Their glorious efforts, winged with heavenly hopes, 

Each rising morning sees still higher rise; 

Kach bounteous dawn its novelty presents 

To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame; 

While Nature’s circle, like a chariot wheel, 

Rolling beneath their elevated aims, 

Makes their fair prospect fairer every hour ; 

Advancing virtue in a line to bliss.” 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 237 


Even here, where he is in his most amiable 
mood, you see at what a telescopic distance he 
stands from mother Earth and simple human joys, 
—“Nature’s circle rolls beneath.” Indeed, we 
remember no mind in poetic literature that seems 
to have absorbed less of the beauty and the healthy 
breath of the common landscape than Young’s. 
His images, often grand and finely presented, wit- 
ness that sublimely sudden leap of thought, — 


“Embryos we must be till we burst the shell, 
Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to hfe,” — 


lie almost entirely within that circle of observa- 
tion which would be familiar to a man who lived 
in town, hung about the theatres, read the news- 
paper, and went home often by moon and star 
light. 

There is no natural object nearer than the moon 
that seems to have any strong attraction for him; 
and even to the moon he chiefly appeals for patron- 
age, and “pays his court” to her. It is reckoned 
among the many deficiencies of Lorenzo, that he 
“never asked the moon one question,” —an omis- 
sion which Young thinks eminently unbecoming a 
rational being. He describes nothing so well as 
a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail 
over nothing more familiar than the Day of Judg- 
ment and an imaginary journey among the stars. 
Once on Saturn’s ring, he feels at home, and his 
language becomes quite easy :— 


“What behold I now ? 
A wilderness of wonders burning round, 
Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres, 
Perhaps the villas of descending gods!” 


238 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


It is like a sudden relief from a strained posture 
when, in the “ Night Thoughts,” we come on any 
allusion that carries us to the lanes, woods, or 
fields. Such allusions are amazingly rare, and we 
could almost count them ona single hand. That 
we may do him no injustice, we will quote the 


three best : — 


‘Like blossomed trees o’erturned by vernal storm, 
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay. 


In the same brook none ever bathed him twice : 
To the same life none ever twice awoke. 

We call the brook the same — the same we think 
Our life, though still more rapid in its flow ; 

Nor mark the much irrevocably lapsed 

And mingled with the sea. 


The crown of manhood is a winter joy ; 
An evergreen that stands the northern blast, 
And blossoms in the rigour of our fate.” 


The adherence to abstractions, or to the personi- 
fication of abstractions, is closely allied in Young 
to the want of genuine emotion. He sees Virtue 
sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists and 
storms of earth; he sees Religion coming down 
from the skies, with this world in her left hand 
and the other world in her right; but we never 
find him dwelling on virtue or religion as it really 
exists, —in the emotions of a man dressed in an 
ordinary coat, and seated by his fireside of an 
evening, with his hand resting on the head of his 
little daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish 
ends, in the internal triumph of justice and pity 
over personal resentment, in all the sublime self- 
renunciation and sweet charities which are found 
in the details of ordinary life. Now emotion links 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 239 


itself with particulars, and only in a faint and 
secondary manner with abstractions. An orator 
may discourse very eloquently on injustice in gen- 
eral, and leave his audience cold; but let him 
state a special case of oppression, and every heart 
will throb. The most untheoretic persons are 
aware of this relation between true emotion and 
particular facts, as opposed to general terms, and 
implicitly recognize it in the repulsion they feel 
towards any one who professes strong feeling about 
abstractions, in the interjectional “ humbug!” 
which immediately rises to their lips. Wherever 
abstractions appear to excite strong emotion, this 
occurs in men of active intellect and imagination, 
in whom the abstract term rapidly and vividly 
calls up the particulars it represents, these particu- 
lars being the true source of the emotion; and such 
men, if they wished to express their feeling, would 
be infallibly prompted to the presentation of de- 
tails. Strong emotion can no more be directed to 
generalities apart from particulars, than skill in 
figures can be directéd to arithmetic apart from 
numbers. Generalities are the refuge at once of 
deficient intellectual activity and deficient feeling. 

If we except the passages in “ Philander,” “ Nar- 
cissa,” and “Lucia,” there is hardly a trace of 
human sympathy, of self-forgetfulness in the Joy 
or sorrow of a fellow-being, throughout this long 
poem, which professes to treat the various phases 
of man’s destiny. And even in the “ Narcissa” 
Night, Young repels us by the low moral tone of 
his exaggerated lament. This married step-daugh- 
ter died at Lyons, and being a Protestant, was 
denied burial, so that her friends had to bury her 
in secret, — one of the many miserable results of 


240 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


superstition, but not a fact to throw an educated, 
still less a Christian, man into a fury of hatred 
and vengeance, in contemplating it after the lapse 
of five years. Young, however, takes great pains 
to simulate a bad feeling :— 
“ Of grief 

And indignation rival bursts I poured, 

Half execration mingled with my prayer ; 

Kindled at man, while I his God adored ; 

Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust ; 

Stamped the cursed soil; and with humanity 

(Denied Narcissa) wished them all a grave.” 


The odiously bad taste of this last clause makes 
us hope that it is simply a platitude, and not in- 
tended as witticism, until he removes the possi- 
bility of this favourable doubt by immediately 
asking, “ Flows my resentment into guilt?” 

When, by an afterthought, he attempts some- 
thing like sympathy, he only betrays more clearly 
his want of it. Thus, in the first Night, when 
he turns from his private griefs to depict earth as 
a hideous abode of misery .for all mankind, and 
asks, — 

«* What then am I, who sorrow for myself?” 


he falls at once into calculating the benefit of 
sorrowing for others : — 
‘¢ More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts; 
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang. 


Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give 
Swollen thought a second channel.” : 


This remarkable negation of sympathy is in per- 
fect consistency with Young’s theory of ethics :— 
‘¢ Virtue is a crime, 


A crime to reason, if it costs us pain 


Unpaid.” 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 241 


If there is no immortality for man, — 


“Sense! take the rein ; blind Passion! drive us on ; 
And ignorance ! befriend us on our way. 
Yes, give the Pulse full empire ; live the Brute, 
Since as the brute we die. The sum of man, 
Of godlike man, to revel and to rot. 


If this life’s gain invites him to the deed, 
Why not his country sold, his father slain ? 
Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdained, 
Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools, 
And think a turf or tombstone covers all.. 


Die for thy country, thou romantic fool ! 
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink. 


As in the dying parent dies the child, 
Virtue with Immortality expires. 

Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, 
Whateer has boast, has told me he’s a knave. 
His duty ’t is to love himself alone ; 

Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles.” 


We can imagine the man who “ denies his soul 
immortal,” replying: “It is quite possible that 
you would be a knave, and love yourself alone, if 
it were not for your belief in immortality; but 
you are not to force upon me what would result 
from your own utter want of moral emotion. I 
am just and honest, not because I expect to live in 
another world, but because, having felt the pain of 
injustice and dishonesty towards myself, I have a 
fellow-feeling with other men, who would suffer 
the same pain if I were unjust or dishonest towards 
them. Why should I give my neighbour short 
weight in this world, because there is not another 


world in which I should have nothing to weigh 
VOL. 11. — 16 


242 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


out to him? Iam honest, because I don’t like to 
inflict evil on others in this life, not because I’m 
afraid of evil to myself in another. The fact 2s, I 
do not love myself alone, whatever logical neces- 
sity there may be for that in your mind. f have 
a tender love for my wife and children and friends, 
and through that love I sympathize with lke affec- 
tions in other men. It is a pang to me to witness 
the sufferings of a fellow-being, and I feel his 
suffering the more acutely because he is mortal, — 
because his life is so short, and I would have it, if 
possible, filled with happiness and not misery. 
Through my union and fellowship with the men 
and women I have seen, I feel a like, though a 
fainter, sympathy with those I have not seen; and 
I am able so to live in imagination with the gen- 
erations to come, that their good is not alien to 
me, and is a stimulus to me to labour for ends 
which may not benefit myself, but will benefit 
them. It is possible that you may prefer to live 
the brute, to sell your country, or to slay your 
father, if you were not afraid of some disagreealle 
consequences from the criminal laws of another 
world; but even if I could conceive no motive but 
my own worldly interest, or the gratification of my 
animal desire, I have not observed that beastliness, 
treachery, and parricide are the direct way to hap- 
piness and comfort on earth. And I should say 
that if you feel no motive to common morality 
but your fear of a criminal bar in heaven, you are 
decidedly a man for the police on earth to keep 
their eye upon, since it is matter of world-old 
experience that fear of distant consequences is a 
very insufficient barrier against the rush of imme- 
diate desire. Fear of consequences is only one 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 243 


form of egoism, which will hardly stand against 
half-a-dozen other forms of egoism bearing down 
upon it. And in opposition to your theory that 
a belief in immortality is the only source of virtue, 
I maintain that, so far as moral action is depend- 
ent on that belief, so far the emotion which prompts 
it is not truly moral, — is still in the stage of ego- 
ism, and has not yet attained the higher develop- 
ment of sympathy. In proportion as a man would 
care less for the rights and welfare of his fellow if 
he did not believe in a future life, in that propor- 
tion is he wanting in the genuine feelings of jus- 
tice and benevolence; as the musician who would 
care less to play a sonata of Beethoven finely in 
solitude than in public, where he was to be paid 
for it, is wanting in genuine enthusiasm for 
music. ” 

Thus far might answer the man who “ denies 
himself immortal;” and — allowing for that defi- 
cient recognition of the finer and more indirect 
influences exercised by the idea of immoitality 
which might be expected from one who took up a 
dogmatic position on such a subject — we think he 
would have given a sufficient reply to Young and 
other theological advocates who, like him, pique 
themselves on the loftiness of their doctrine when 
they maintain that “ Virtue with Immortality 
expires.” We may admit, indeed, that if the 
better part of virtue consists, as Young appears to 
think, in contempt for mortal joys, in “ medita- 
tion of our own decease,” and in “applause” of 
God in the style of a congratulatory address to her 
Majesty, —all which has small relation to the 
well-being of mankind on this earth, — the motive 
to it must be gathered from something that lies 


244 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


quite outside the sphere of human sympathy. But 
for certain other elements of virtue, which are of 
more obvious importance to untheological minds, 
__a delicate sense of our neighbour's rights, an 
active participation in the joys and sorrows of our 
fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation 
or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition 
of good to others, in a word, the extension and in- 
tensification of our sympathetic nature, — we think 
it of some importance to contend that they have 
no more direct relation to the belief in a future 
state than the interchange of gases in the lungs 
has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is 
conceivable that in some minds the deep pathos 
lying in the thought of human mortality — that 
we are here for a little while and then vanish 
away, that this earthly life is all that is given to 
our loved ones and to our many suffering fellow- 
men — lies nearer the fountains of moral emotion 
than the conception of extended existence. And 
surely it ought to be a welcome fact, if the thought 
of mortality, as well as of immortality, be favour- 
able to virtue. Do writers of sermons and reli- 
gious novels prefer that men should be vicious in 
order that there may be a more evident political 
and social necessity for printed sermons and cleri- 
cal fictions? Because learned gentlemen are theo- 
logical, are we to have no more simple honesty and 
good-will? We can imagine that the proprietors 
of a patent water-supply have a dread of common 
springs; but, for our own part, we think there 
cannot be too great a security against a lack of 
fresh water or of pure morality. To us it is a 
matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter neces- 
sary of healthful life is independent of theological 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 245 


ink, and that its evolution is ensured in the inter- 
action of human souls, as certainly as the evolution 
of science or of art, with which, indeed, it is but 
a twin ray melting into them with undefinable 
limits. 

To return to Young. We can often detect a 
man’s deficiencies in what he admires more clearly 
than in what he contemns, —- in the sentiments he 
presents as laudable rather than in those he de- 
eries. And in Young’s notion of what is lofty he 
casts a shadow by which we can measure him 
Without further trouble. For example, in arguing 
for human immortality he says: — 


“ First, what is true ambition ? The pursuit 
Of glory nothing less than man can share. 


The Visible and Present are for brutes, 

A slender portion, and a narrow bound! 

These Reason, with an energy divine, 

O’erleaps, and claims the Future and Unseen, — 
The vast Unseen, the Future fathomless ! 

When the great soul buoys up to this high point, 
Leaving gross Nature’s sediments below, 

Then, and then only, Adam’s offspring quits 
The sage and hero of the fields and woods, 
Asserts his rank, and rises into man.” 


So, then, if it were certified that, as some be- 
nevolent minds have tried to infer, our dumb 
fellow-creatures would share a future existence, 1n 
which it is to be hoped we should neither beat, 
starve, nor maim them, our ambition for a future 
life would cease to be “ lofty!” This is a notion 
of loftiness which may pair off with Dr. Whewell’s 
celebrated observation, that Bentham’s moral the- 
ory is low, because it includes justice and mercy 
to brutes. 


246 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


But, for a reflection of Young’s moral personal- 
ity on a colossal scale, we must turn to those 
passages where his rhetoric is at its utmost stretch 
of inflation, — where he addresses the Deity, dis- 
courses of the divine operations, or describes the 
Last Judgment. As a compound of vulgar pomp, 
crawling adulation, and hard selfishness, presented 
under the guise of piety, there are few things in 
literature to surpass the Ninth Night, entitled 
“Consolation,” especially in the pages where he 
describes the Last Judgment, a subject to which, 
with naive self-betrayal, he apples phraseology 
favoured by the exuberant penny-a-liner. Thus, 
when God descends, and the groans of hell are 
opposed by “ shouts of joy,” — much as cheers and 
eroans contend at a public meeting where the reso- 
lutions are not passed unanimously, —the poet 
completes his climax in this way :— 


“¢ Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise, 
The charmed spectators thunder their applause.” 


In the same taste he sings :— 


“ Eternity, the various sentence past, 
Assigns the severed throng distinct abodes, 
Sulphureous or ambrosial.” 


Exquisite delicacy of indication! He is too 
nice to be specific as to the interior of the “ sul- 
phureous ” abode; but when once half the human 
race are shut up there, hear how he enjoys turning 
the key on them ! — 


“What ensues ? 
The deed predominant, the deed of deeds! 
Which makes a hell of hell, a heaven of heaven / 
The goddess, with determined aspect, turns 
Her adamantine key’s enormous size 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDUINESS. 247 


Through destiny’s inextricable wards, 

Deep driving every bolt on both their fates. 

Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven, 

Down, down she hurls it through the dark profound, 
Ten thousand, thousand fathom; there to rust 

And ne’er unlock her resolution more. 

The deep resounds ; and hell, through all her glooms, 
Returns, in groans, the melancholy roar.” 


This is one of the blessings for which Dr. Young 
thanks God “ most:” — 


‘¢ For all I bless thee, most, for the severe; 
Her death — my own at hand — the fiery gulf, 
That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent / 
It thunders ; but it thunders to preserve ; 
Recta: its wholesome dread 
Averts the dreaded pain; its hideous groans 
Join heaven’s sweet Hallelujahs wn thy pravse, 
Great Source of good alone! How kind in all! 
In vengeance kind! Pain, Death, Gehenna, save” ,.. 


7. €., save me, Dr. Young; who, in return for that 
favour, promise to give my divine patron the 
monopoly of that exuberance in laudatory epithet 
of which specimens may be seen at any moment in 
a large number of dedications and odes to kings, 
queens, prime ministers, and other persons of dis- 
tinction. Zhat, in Young’s conception, is what 
God delights in. His crowning aim in the drama 
of the ages is to vindicate his own renown. The 
God of the “ Night Thoughts ” is simply Young 
himself, “writ large,” — a didactic poet, who 
“lectures ” mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of 
mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, 
hell and heaven, and expects the tribute of inex- 
haustible “ applause.” Young has no conception 
of religion as anything else than egoism turned 
heavenward; and he does not merely imply this, 


248 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


he insists on it. Religion, he tells us, in argu- 
mentative passages too long to quote, 1s “ ambition, 
pleasure, and the love of gain,” directed towards 
the joys of the future life instead of the present. 
And his ethics correspond to his religion. He 
vacillates, indeed, in his ethical theory, and shifts 
his position in order to suit his immediate purpose 
in argument; but he never changes his level so 
as to see beyond the horizon of mere selfishness. 
Sometimes he insists, as we have seen, that the 
belief in a future life is the only basis of morality ; 
but elsewhere he tells us, — 


“Tn self-applause is virtue’s golden prize.” 


Virtue, with Young, must always squint, — must 
never look straight towards the immediate object 
of its emotion and effort. Thus, if a man risks 
perishing in the snow himself, rather than forsake 
a weaker comrade, he must either do this because 
his hopes and fears are directed to another world, 
or because he desires to applaud himself after- 
wards! Young, if we may believe him, would 
despise the action as folly unless it had these 
motives. Let us hope he was not so bad as he 
pretended to be! The tides of the divine life in 
man move under the thickest ice of theory. 

Another indication of Young’s deficiency in 
moral — 7. ¢, in sympathetic — emotion, is his 
unintermitting habit of pedagogic moralizing. On 
its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches 
science; on its emotional side, art. Now, the pro- 
ducts of art are great in proportion as they result 
from that immediate prompting of innate power 
which we call Genius, and not from laboured — 
obedience to a theory or rule; and the presence of 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 249 


genius or innate prompting is directly opposed to the 
perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of 
faculty is imperious, and excludes the reflection why 
it should act. In the same way, in proportion as 
morality is emotional, 2. ¢., has affinity with art, 
it will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling 
and action, and not as the recognition of a rule. 
Love does not say, “I ought to love,” — it loves. 
Pity does not say, “It is right to be pitiful,” — it 
pities. Justice does not say, “I am bound to be 
just,” —it feels justly. It is only where moral 
emotion is comparatively weak that the contem- 
plation of a rule or theory habitually mingles with 
its action; and in accordance with this, we think 
experience, both in literature and life, has shown 
that the minds: which are pre-eminently didactic 
—which insist on a lesson and despise everything 
that will not convey a moral—are deficient in 
sympathetic emotion. A certain poet is recorded 
to have said that he “ wished everything of his 
burnt that did not impress some moral; even in 
love-verses, it might be flung in by the way.” 
What poet was it who took this medicinal view of 
poetry? Dr. Watts, or James Montgomery, or 
some other singer of spotless life and ardent piety ? 
Not at all. It was Waller. A significant fact in 
relation to our position, that the predominant 
didactic tendency proceeds rather from the poet's 
perception that it is good for other men to be 
moral, than from any overflow of moral feeling in 
himself! A man who is perpetually thinking in 
apothegms, who has an unintermittent flux of 
admonition, can have little energy left for simple 
emotion. And this is the case with Young. In 
his highest flights of contemplation, and his most 


250 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


wailing soliloquies, he interrupts himself to fling 
an admonitory parenthesis at Lorenzo, or to hint 
that “folly’s creed” is the reverse of his own. 
Before his thoughts can flow, he must fix his eye 
on an imaginary miscreant, who gives unlimited 
scope for lecturing, and recriminates just enough 
to keep the spring of admonition and argument 
going to the extent of nine Books. It is curious 
to see how this pedagogic habit of mind runs 
through Young’s contemplation of Nature. As the 
tendency to see our own sadness reflected in 
the external world has been called by Mr. Ruskin 
the “pathetic fallacy,” so we may call Young’s 
disposition to see a rebuke or a warning in every 
natural object the “ pedagogic fallacy.” To his 
mind the heavens are “ forever scolding as they 
shine;” and the great function of the stars is to 
be a “lecture to mankind.” The conception of 
the Deity as a didactic author is not merely an 
implicit point of view with him; he works it out 
in elaborate imagery, and at length makes it the 
occasion of his most extraordinary achievement in 
the “art of sinking,” by exclaiming, apropos, we 
need hardly say, of the nocturnal heavens :— 


‘* Divine Instructor! Thy first volume this 
For man’s perusal! all in capitats!” 


It is this pedagogic tendency, this sermonizing 
attitude of Young’s mind, which produces the 
wearisome monotony of his pauses. After the 
first two or three Nights, he is rarely singing, 
rarely pouring forth any continuous melody in- 
spired by the spontaneous flow of thought or feel- 
ing. He is rather occupied with argumentative 
insistence, with hammering in the proofs of his 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 251 


propositions by disconnected verses, which he puts 
down at intervals. The perpetual recurrence of 
the pause at the end of the line throughout long 
passages, makes them as fatiguing to the ear as a 
monotonous chant, which consists of the endless 
repetition of one short musical phrase. For 
example : — 
“ Past hours, 

If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight, » 

If folly bound our prospect by the grave, 

All feeling of futurity be numbed, 

All godlike passion for eternals quenched, 

All relish of realities expired ; 

Renounced all correspondence with the skies ; 

Our freedom chained; quite wingless our desire ; 

In sense dark-prisoned all that ought to soar; 

Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust; 

Dismounted every great and glorious aim ; 

Enthralled every faculty divine, 

Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world.’’ 


How different from the easy, graceful melody 
of Cowper’s blank verse! Indeed, it is hardly 
possible to criticise Young, without being reminded 
at every step of the contrast presented to him by 
Cowper. And this contrast urges itself upon us the 
more from the fact that there is, to a certain ex- 
tent, a parallelism between the “ Night Thoughts ” 
and the “Task.” In both poems the author 
achieves his greatest, in virtue of the new freedom 
conferred by blank verse; both poems are profes- 
sedly didactic, and mingle much satire with their 
graver meditations; both peems are the produc- 
tions of men whose estimate of this life was formed 
by the light of a belief in immortality, and who 
were intensely attached to Christianity. On some 
grounds we might have anticipated a more morbid 
view of things from Cowper than from Young. 


252 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


Cowper’s religion was dogmatically the more 
gloomy, for he was a Calvinist; while Young was 
a “low” Arminian, —believing that Christ died 
for all, and that the only obstacle to any man’s 
salvation lay in his will, which he could change 
if he chose. There was real and deep sadness in- 
volved in Cowper’s personal lot; while Young, 
apart from his ambitious and greedy discontent, 
seems to have had no great sorrow. 

Yet see how a lovely, sympathetic nature mani- 
fests itself in spite of creed and circumstance! 
Where is the poem that surpasses the “ Task,” — 
in the genuine love it breathes, at once towards 
inanimate and animate existence; in truthfulness 
of perception and sincerity of presentation; in the 
calm gladness that springs from a delight in ob- 
jects for their own sake, without self-reference ; in 
divine sympathy with the lowliest pleasures, with 
the most short-lived capacity for pain? Here is 
no railing at the earth’s “ melancholy map,” but 
the happiest lingering over her simplest scenes 
with all the fond minuteness of attention that be- 
longs to love; no pompous rhetoric about the infe- 
riority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their 
behalf against man’s inconsiderateness and cruelty, 
and a sense of enlarged happiness from their com- 
panionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about 
human misery and human virtue, but that close 
and vivid presentation of particular sorrows and 
privations, of particular deeds and misdeeds, which 
is the direct road to the emotions. How Cowper's 
exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of 
morning sunlight on the commonest objects, at 
once disclosing every detail, and investing every 
detail with beauty! No object is too small to 
prompt his song, —not the sooty film on the bars, 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 253 


or the spoutless teapot holding a bit of mignon- 
ette, that serves to cheer the dingy town-lodging 
with a “hint that Nature lives;” and yet his 
song is never trivial, for he is alive to small 
objects, not because his mind is narrow, but be- 
cause his glance is clear and his heart is large. 
Instead of trying to edify us by supercilious allu- 
sions to the brutes and the stalls, he interests us 
in that tragedy of the hen-roost, when the thief 
has wrenched the door, 


‘* Where Chanticleer amidst his harem sleeps 
In unsuspecting pomp ;”’ 


in the patient cattle, that on the winter’s morning 


* Mourn in corners where the fence 
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep 
In unrecumbent sadness ;” 


in the little squirrel, that, surprised by him in 
his woodland walk, 


“¢ At once, swift as a bird, 
Ascends the neighbouring beech ; there whisks his brush, 
And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud, 
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm 
And anger insignificantly fierce.” 


And then he passes into reflection, not with curt 
apothegm and snappish reproof, but with that 
melodious flow of utterance which belongs to 
thought when it is carried along in a stream ot 
feeling : — 

‘““The heart is hard in nature, and unfit 
For human fellowship, —as being void 
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike 
To love and friendship both, — that is not pleased 
With sight of animals enjoying life, 
Nor feels their happiness augment his own.” 


254 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


His large and tender heart embraces the most 
every-day forms of human hfe,— the carter driving 
his team through the wintry storm; the cottager’s 
wife who, painfully nursing the embers on her 
hearth, while her infants “sit cowering o’er the 
sparks, ” 


‘* Retires, content to quake, so they be warmed;”’ 


or the villager, with her little ones, going out to 
pick 


“A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook ; ” 


and he compels our colder natures to follow his in 
its manifold sympathies, not by exhortations, not 
by telling us to meditate at midnight, to indulge 
the thought of death, or to ask ourselves how we 
shall “ weather an eternal night,” but by presenting 
to us the object of his compassion truthfully and 
lovingly. 

And when he handles greater themes, when he 
takes a wider survey, and considers the men or the 
deeds which have a direct influence on the welfare 
of communities and nations, there is the same 
unselfish warmth of feeling, the same scrupulous 
truthfulness. He is never vague in his remon- 
strance or his satire; but puts his finger on some 
particular vice or folly, which excites his indig- 
nation or “ dissolves his heart in pity,” because of 
some specific injury it does to his fellow-man or to 
a sacred cause. And when he is asked why he 
interests himself about the surrows and wrongs of 
others, hear what is the reason he gives. Not, 
like Young, that the movements of the planets 
show a mutual dependence, and. that, — 


“Thus man his sovereign duty learns in this 
Material picture of benevolence ;” 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 255 


or that, — 


‘“¢ More generous sorrow while it sinks, exalts, 
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.” 


What is Cowper’s answer, when he imagines 
some “sage erudite, profound,” asking him 
“What ’s the world to you?” — 


“Much. TI was born of woman, and drew milk 
As sweet as charity from human breasts. 
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, 
And exercise all functions of a man. 
How then should I and any man that lives 
Be strangers to each other ?”’ 


Young is astonished that men can make war on 
each other,— that any one can “ seize his brother's 
throat,” while 


‘“¢ The Planets cry, ‘ Forbear.’” 


Cowper weeps because 


‘¢ There is no flesh in man’s obdurate heart : 
It does not feel for man.” 


Young applauds God as a monarch with an em- 
pire, and a court quite superior to the English, or 
as an author who produces “ volumes for man’s 
perusal.” Cowper sees his Father’s love in all 
the gentle pleasures of the home fireside, in the 
charms even of the wintry landscape, and thinks, — 


“ Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds 
Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower, 
Or what he views of beautiful or grand 
In nature, from the broad, majestic oak 
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun, 
Prompts with remembrance of a present God.” 


256 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


To conclude, — for we must arrest’ ourselves in a 
contrast that would lead us beyond our bounds, — 
Young flies for his utmost consolation to the Day 
of Judgment, when 


“Final Ruin fiercely drives 
Her ploughshare o’er creation ; ” 


when earth, stars, and sun are swept aside, — 


“¢ And now, all dross removed, heaven’s own pure day, 
Full on the confines of our ether, flames : 
While (dreadful contrast !) far (how far!) beneath, 


Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, 


And storms sulphureous ; her voracious jaws 
Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey,” — 


Dr. Young, and similar “ ornaments of religion 
and virtue,” passing of course with grateful “ ap- 
plause ” into the upper region. Cowper finds his 
highest inspiration in the Millennium, —in the 
restoration of this, our beloved home of earth, to 
perfect holiness and bliss, when the Supreme 


“‘ Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend 
Propitious in his chariot paved with love ; 
And what his storms have blasted and defaced 
For man’s revolt, shall with a smile repair.” 


And into what delicious melody his song flows 
at the thought of that blessedness to be enjoyed by 
future generations on earth! — 


‘¢ The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks 
Shout to each other, and the mountain-tcps 
From distant mountains catch the flying joy; 
Till, nation after nation taught the strain, 
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round!” 


The sum of our comparison is this: In Young 
we have the type of that deficient human sympa- 


WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS, 257 


thy, that impiety towards the present and the 
visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities, 
and its religion to the remote, the vague, and the 
unknown; in Cowper we have the type of that 
genuine love which cherishes things in proportion 
to their nearness, and feels its reverence grow in 
proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. 


VOL. 11.—17 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 


GIVEN, a man with moderate intellect, a moral 
standard not higher than the average, some rhetor- 
ical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is 
the career in which, without the aid of birth or — 
money, he may most easily attain power and repu- 
tation in English society? Where is that Goshen 
of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and 
learning will pass for profound instruction, where 
platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted 
narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God- 
given piety? Let such a man become an evangeli- 
cal preacher; he will then find it possible to 
reconcile small ability with great ambition, super- 
ficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a 
middling morale with a high reputation for sanc- 
tity. Let him shun practical extremes and be 
ultra only in what is purely theoretic: let him be 
stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on 
fasting; unflinching in insisting on the Eternity 
of punishment, but diffident of curtailing the sub- 
stantial comforts of Time; ardent and imaginative 
on the pre-millennial advent of Christ, but cold 
and cautious towards every other infringement of 
the status quo. Let him fish for souls, not with 
the bait of inconvenient singularity, but with the 
drag-net of comfortable conformity. Let him be 
hard and literal in his interpretation only when 
he wants to hurl texts at the heads of unbelievers 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 259 


and adversaries; but when the letter of the Scrip- 
tures presses too closely on the genteel Christianity 
of the nineteenth century, let him use his spiritu- 
alizing alembic and disperse it into impalpable 
ether. Let him preach less of Christ than of 
Antichrist; let him be less definite in showing 
what sin is than in showing who is the Man of 
Sin, less expansive on the blessedness of faith than 
on the accursedness of infidelity. Above all, let 
him set up as an interpreter of prophecy, and rival 
Moore’s Almanack in the prediction of political 
events, tickling the interest of hearers who are but 
moderately spiritual by showing how the Holy 
Spirit has dictated problems and charades for their 
benefit, and how, if they are ingenious enough to 
solve these, they may have their Christian graces 
nourished by learning precisely to whom they may 
point as the “horn that had eyes,” “the lying 
prophet,” and the “ unclean spirits.” In this way 
he will draw men to him by the strong chords of 
their passions, made reason-proof by being bap- 
tized with the name of piety. In this way he 
may gain a metropolitan pulpit; the avenues to 
his church will be as crowded as the passages to 
the opera; he has but to print his prophetic ser- 
mons and bind them in lilac and gold, and they 
will adorn the drawing-room table of all evangeli- 
cal ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious “ light 
reading ” the demonstration that the prophecy of 
the locusts whose sting is in their tail is fulfilled in 
the fact of the Turkish commander’s having taken 
a horse’s tail for his standard, and that the French 
are the very frogs predicted in the Revelations. 
Pleasant to the clerical flesh under such circum- 
stances is the arrival of Sunday! Somewhat at a 


260 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


disadvantage during the week, in the presence 
of working-day interests and lay splendours, on 
Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure of a 
thousand eyes, and predominates at once over the 
Amphitryon with whom he dines, and the most 
captious member of his church or vestry. He has 
an immense advantage over all other public 
speakers. The platform orator is subject to the 
criticism of hisses and groans. Counsel for the 
plaintiff expects the retort of counsel for the de- 
fendant. The honourable gentleman on one side of 
the House is liable to have his facts and figures 
shown up by his honourable friend on the opposite 
side. Even the scientific or literary lecturer, if 
he is dull or incompetent, may see the best part of 
his audience quietly slip out one by one. But the 
preacher is completely master of the situation: no 
one may hiss, no one may depart. Like the writer 
of imaginary conversations, he may put what im- 
becilities he pleases into the mouths of his antago- 
nists, and swell with triumph when he has refuted 
them. He may riot in gratuitous assertions, con- 
fident that no man will contradict him; he may 
exercise perfect free-will in_ logic, and invent 
illustrative experience; he may give an evangelical 
edition of history with the inconvenient facts 
omitted, —all this he may do with impunity, 
certain that those of his hearers who are not sym- 
pathizing are not listening. For the Press has no 
band of critics who go the round of the churches 
and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or 
defect in the preacher, to make a “ feature ” in 
their article; the clergy are, practically, the most 
irresponsible of all talkers.. For this reason, at 
least, it is well that they do not always allow their 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 261 


discourses to be merely fugitive, but are often 
induced to fix them in that black and white in 
which they are open to the criticism of any man 
who has the courage and patience to treat them 
with thorough freedom of speech and pen. 

It is because we think this criticism of clerical 
teaching desirable for the public good, that we 
devote some pages to Dr. Cumming. He is, as 
every one knows, a preacher of immense popularity ; 
and of the numerous publications in which he 
perpetuates his pulpit labours, all circulate widely, 
and some, according to their titlepage, have reached 
the sixteenth thousand. Now, our opinion of these 
publications is the very opposite of that given by 
a newspaper eulogist: we do not “ believe that the 
repeated issues of Dr. Cumming’s thoughts are 
having a beneficial effect on society,” but the 
reverse: and hence, little inclined as we are to 
dwell on his pages, we think it worth while to do 
so, for the sake of pointing out in them what we 
believe to be profoundly mistaken and pernicious. 
Of Dr. Cumming personally we know absolutely 
nothing; our acquaintance with him is confined to 
a perusal of his works, our judgment of him is 
founded solely on the manner in which he has 
written himself down on his pages. We know 
neither how he looks nor how he lives. We are 
ignorant whether, like Saint Paul, he has a bodily 
presence that is weak and contemptible, or whether 
his person is as florid and as prone to amplifica- 
tion as his style. For aught we know, he may not 
only have the gift of prophecy, but may bestow 
the profits of all his works to feed the poor, and be 
ready to give his own body to be burned with as 
much alacrity as he infers the everlasting burning 


262 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


of Roman Catholics and Puseyites. Out of the 
pulpit he may be a model of justice, truthfulness, 
and the love that thinketh no evil; but we are 
obliged to judge of his charity by the spirit we 
find in his sermons, and shall only be glad to learn 
that his practice is, in many respects, an amiable 
non sequitur from his teaching. 

Dr. Cumming’s mind is evidently not of the 
pietistic order. There is not the slightest leaning 
towards mysticism in his Christianity, —no indi- 
cation of religious raptures, of delight in God, of 
spiritual communion with the Father. He is 
most at home in the forensic view of Justification, 
and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than 
as an experience. He insists on good works as 
the sign of justifying faith, as labours to be 
achieved to the glory of God; but he rarely repre- 
sents them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow 
of a soul filled with Divine love. He is at home 
in the external, the polemical, the historical, the 
circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and 
practical. The great majority of his published 
sermons are occupied with argument or philippic 
against Romanists and unbelievers, with “ vindica- 
tions ” of the Bible, with the political interpretation 
of prophecy, or the criticism of public events; 
and the devout aspiration or the spiritual and 
practical exhortation is tacked to them as a sort 
of fringe in a hurried sentence or two at the end. 
He revels in the demonstration that the Pope is 
the Man of Sin; he is copious on the downfall of 
the Ottoman Empire; he appears to glow with 
satisfaction in turning a story which tends to 
show how he abashed an “ infidel;” it is a favour- 
ite exercise with him to form conjectures of the 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 263 


process by which the earth is to be burned up, and 
to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce being 
caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Roman- 
ists, Puseyites, and infidels are given over to 
gnashing of teeth. But of really spiritual joys 
and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a 
manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of 
sympathy with that yearning over the lost and 
erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, 
and prompted the sublime prayer, “ Father, for- 
give them,” of the gentler fruits of the Spirit, and 
the peace of God which passeth understanding, — 
of all this, we find little trace in Dr. Cumming’s 
discourses. 

His style is in perfect correspondence with this 
habit of mind. Though diffuse, as that of all 
preachers must be, it has rapidity of movement, 
perfect clearness, and some aptness of illustration. 
He has much of that literary talent which makes 
a good journalist, —the power of beating out an 
idea over a large space, and of introducing far- 
fetched d&propos. His writings have, indeed, no 
high merit: they have no originality or force of 
thought, no striking felicity of presentation, no 
depth of emotion. Throughout nine volumes we 
have alighted on no passage which impressed us as 
worth extracting, and placing among the “ beau- 
ties” of evangelical writers, such as Robert Hall, 
Foster the Essayist, or Isaac Taylor. Everywhere 
there is commonplace cleverness, nowhere a spark 
of rare thought, of lofty sentiment, or pathetic 
tenderness. We feel ourselves in company with 
avoluble retail talker, whose language is exuber- 
ant but not exact, and to whom we should never 
think of referring for precise information or for 


264 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


well-digested thought and experience. His argu- 
ment coutinually slides into wholesale assertion 
and vague declamation, and in his love of orna- 
_ ment he frequently becomes tawdry. For example, 
he tells us! that “ Botany weaves around the cross 
her. amaranthine garlands; and Newton comes 
from his starry ce ied naan from his flowery 
resting-place, and Werner and Hutton from their 
subterranean graves, at the voice of Chalmers, to 
acknowledge that all they learned and elicited in 
their respective provinces, has only served to show 
more clearly that Jesus of Nazareth is enthroned 
on the riches of the universe;” and so prosaic an 
injunction to his hearers as that they should choose 
a residence within an easy distance of church is 
magnificently draped by him as an exhortation to 
prefer a house “ that basks in the sunshine of the 
countenance of God.” Like all preachers of his 
class, he is more fertile in imaginative paraphrase 
than in close exposition, and in this way he gives 
us some remarkable fragments of what we may call 
the romance of Scripture, filling up the outline of 
the record with an elaborate colouring quite un- 
dreamed of by more literal minds. The serpent, 
he informs us, said to Eve, “ Can it be so? Surely 
you are mistaken that God hath said you shall 
die, a creature so fair, so lovely, so beautiful. It 
is impossible. Zhe laws of nature and physical 
science tell you that my interpretation is correct ; 
you shall not die. I can tell you by my own ex- 
perience as an angel that you shall be as gods, 
knowing good and evil.”2 Again, according to 
Dr. Cumming, Abel had so clear an idea of the 
Incarnation and Atonement that when he offered 
1 Apoc. Sketches, p. 265. 2 Tbid. p. 294. 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 265 


his sacrifice, “he must have said, ‘I feel myself a 
guilty sinner, and that in myself I cannot meet 
thee alive; I lay on thine altar this victim, and I 
shed its blood as my testimony that mine should 
be shed; and I look for forgiveness and undeserved 
mercy through Him who is to bruise the serpent’s 
head, and whose atonement this typifies.’”1 In- 
deed, his productions are essentially ephemeral ; 
he is essentially a journalist, who writes sermons 
instead of leading articles, who, instead of venting 
diatribes against her Majesty’s Ministers, directs 
his power of invective against Cardinal Wiseman 
and the Puseyites, — instead of declaiming on 
public spirit, perorates on the “glory of God.” 
We fancy he is called, in the more refined evan- 
gelical circles, an “ intellectual preacher; ” by the 
plainer sort of Christians, a “ flowery preacher ; ” 
and we are inclined to think that the more spirit- 
ually minded class of believers, who look with 
greater anxiety for the kingdom of God within 
them than for the visible advent of Christ in 1864, 
will be likely to find Dr. Cumming’s declamatory 
flights and historico-prophetical exercitations as 
little better than “clouts o’ cauld parritch. ” 
Such is our general impression from his writings, 
after an attentive perusal. There are some particu- 
lar characteristics which we shall consider more 
closely, but in doing so we must be understood as 
altogether declining any doctrinal discussion. We 
have no intention to consider the grounds of Dr. 
Cumming’s dogmatic system, to examine the prin- 
ciples of his prophetic exegesis, or to question his 
Opinion concerning the little horn, the river 
Euphrates, or the seven vials. We identify our- 
+ O¢cas.. Disc, vol 1. p 223; 


266 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


selves with no one of the bodies whom he regards 
it as his special mission to attack; we give our 
adhesion neither to Romanisin, Puseyism, nor to 
that anomalous combination of opinions which he 
introduces to us under the name of Infidelity. It 
is slmply as spectators that we criticise Dr. Cum- 
ming’s mode of warfare; and we concern ourselves 
less with what he holds to be Christian truth than 
with his manner of enforcing that truth, less with 
the doctrines he teaches than with the moral spirit 
and tendencies of his teaching. 

One of the most striking characteristics of Dr. 
Cumming’s writings is unscrupulosity of statement. 
His motto apparently is, Christeanitatem, quocunque 
modo Christiantatem ; and the only system he in- 
cludes under the term Christianity is Calvinistic 
Protestantism. Experience has so long shown that 
the human brain is a congenial nidus for inconsis- 
tent beliefs that we do not pause to inquire how 
Dr. Cumming, who attributes the conversion of 
the unbelieving to the Divine Spirit, can think it 
necessary to co-operate with that Spirit by argu- 
mentative white les. Nor do we for a moment 
impugn the genuineness of his zeal for Christian- 
ity, or the sincerity of his conviction that the 
doctrines he preaches are necessary to salvation ; 
on the contrary, we regard the flagrant unveracity 
that we find on his pages as an indirect result of 
that conviction, —as a result, namely, of the in- 
tellectual and moral distortion of view which is 
inevitably produced by assigning to dogmas, based 
on a very complex structure of evidence, the place 
and authority of first truths. A distinct apprecia- 
tion of the value of evidence —in other words, the 
intellectual perception of truth —is more closely 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 267 


allied to truthfulness of statement, or the moral 
quality of veracity, than is generally admitted. 
There is not a more pernicious fallacy afloat in 
common parlance than the wide distinction made 
between intellect and morality. Amiable impulses 
without intellect man may have in common with 
dogs and horses; but morality, which is specifi- 
cally human, is dependent on the regulation of 
feeling by intellect. All human beings who can 
be said to be in any degree moral have their im- 
pulses guided, not indeed always by their own 
intellect, but by the intellect of human beings 
who have gone before them, and created traditions 
and associations which have taken the rank of 
laws. Now, that highest moral habit, the con- 
stant preference of truth both theoretically and 
practically, pre-eminently demands the co-opera- 
tion of the intellect with the impulses; as Is 
indicated by the fact that it is only found in 
anything like completeness in the highest class 
of minds. In accordance with this we think it is 
found that, in proportion as religious sects exalt 
feeling above intellect, and believe themselves to 
be guided by direct inspiration rather than by a 
spontaneous exertion of their faculties, — that 1s, 
in proportion as they are removed from rational- 
ism, — their sense of truthfulness is misty and 
confused. No one can have talked to the more 
enthusiastic Methodists, and listened to their 
stories of miracles, without perceiving that they 
require no other passport to a statement than that 
it accords with their wishes and their general con- 
ception of God’s dealings; nay, they regard as a 
symptom of sinful scepticism an inquiry into the 
evidence for a story which they think unquestion- 


268 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


ably tends to the glory of God, and in retailing 
such stories, new particulars, further tending to 
his glory, are “ borne in” upon their minds. Now 
Dr. Cumming, as we have said, is no enthusiastic 
pietist: within a certain circle, within the mill of 
evangelical orthodoxy, his intellect is perpetually 
at work; but that principle of sophistication 
which our friends the Methodists derive from the 
predominance of their pietistic feelings, is involved 
for him in the doctrine of verbal inspiration ; what 
is for them a state of emotion submerging the in- 
tellect, is with him a formula imprisoning the 
intellect, depriving it of its proper function, — the 
free search for truth,— and making it the mere ser- 
vant-of-all-work to a foregone conclusion. Minds 
fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concern- 
ing a proposition whether it is attested by suffi- 
cient evidence, but whether it accords with 
Scripture; they do not search for facts, as such, 
but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. 
They become accustomed to reject the more direct 
evidence in favour of the less direct, and where 
adverse evidence reaches demonstration they must 
resort to devices and expedients in order to explain 
away coutradiction. It is easy to see that this 
mental habit blunts not only the perception of 
truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the 
man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads 
close upon the precipice of falsehood. 

We have entered into this digression for the sake 
of mitigating the inference that is likely to be drawn 
from that characteristic of Dr. Cumming’s works to 
which we have pointed. He is much in the same 
intellectual condition as that professor of Padua 
who, in order to disprove Galileo’s discovery of 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 269 


Jupiter’s satellites, urged that as there were only 
seven metals there could not be more than seven 
planets, —a mental condition scarcely compatible 
with candour. And we may well suppose that if the 
Professor had held the celief in seven planets, and 
no more, to be a necessary condition of salvation, 
his mental condition would have been so dazed that 
even if he had consented to look through Galileo’s 
telescope, his eyes would have reported in accordance 
with his inward alarms rather than with the external 
fact. So long as a belief in propositions is regarded 
as indispensable to salvation, the pursuit of truth 
as such is not possible, any more than it is possible 
for a man who is swimming for his life to make 
meteorological observations on the storm which 
threatens to overwhelm him. The sense of alarm 
and haste, the anxiety for personal safety, which 
Dr. Cumming insists upon as the proper religious 
attitude, unmans the nature, and allows no thorough 
ealm-thinking, no truly noble, disinterested feeling. 
Hence we by no means suspect that the unscrupulos- 
ity of statement with which we charge Dr. Cumming 
extends beyond the sphere of his theological preju- 
dices; we do not doubt that, religion apart, he 
appreciates and practises veracity. 

A grave general accusation must be supported by 
details ; and in adducing those, we purposely select 
the most obvious cases of misrepresentation, — such 
as require no argument to expose them, but can be per- 
ceived ata glance. Among Dr. Cumming’s numerous 
books, one of the most notable for unscrupulos- 
ity of statement is the “Manual of Christian Evi- 
dences,” written, as he tells us in his preface, not to 
give the deepest solutions of the difficulties in ques- 
tion, but to furnish Scripture-Readers, City Muission- 


270 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


aries, and Sunday-school Teachers with a “ ready 
reply ” to sceptical arguments. This announcement 
that readiness was the chief quality sought for in 
the solutions here given, modifies our inference from 
the other qualities which those solutions present ; 
and it is but fair to presume that when the Chris- 
tian disputant is not in a hurry, Dr. Cumming would 
recommend replies less ready and more veracious. 
Here is an example of what in another place! he 
tells his readers is “change in their pocket,. . . a 
little ready argument which they can employ, and 
therewith answer a fool according to his folly.” 
From the nature of this argumentative small coin, 
we are inclined to think Dr. Cumming understands 
answering a fool according to his folly to mean, giving 
him a foolish answer. We quote from the “ Manual 
of Christian Evidences,” p. 62 :— 


‘“‘Some of the gods which the heathen worshipped 
were among the greatest monsters that ever walked 
the earth. Mercury was a thief; and because he was 
an expert thief, he was enrolled among the gods. Bac- 
chus was a mere sensualist and drunkard; and there- 
fove he was enrolled among the gods. Venus was a 
dissipated and abandoned courtesan; and therefore she 
was enrolled among the goddesses. Mars was a savage, 
that gloried in battle and in blood; and therefore he 
was deified and enrolled among the gods.” 


Does Dr. Cumming believe the purport of these 
sentences? If so, this passage is worth handing 
down as his theory of the Greek myth,—as a 
specimen of the astounding ignorance which was 
possible in a metropolitan preacher, A. D. 1854. And 
if he does not believe them,—the inference must 


1 Lect. on Daniel, p. 6. 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 271 


then be that he thinks delicate veracity about the 
ancient Greeks is not a Christian virtue, but only a 
“splendid sin” of the unregenerate. This inference 
is rendered the more probable by our finding, a little 
further on, that he is not more scrupulous about 
the moderns, if they come under his definition of 
“Infidels.” But the passage we are about to quote 
in proof of this has a worse quality than its discrep- 
ancy with fact. Who that has a spark of generous 
feeling, that rejoices in the presence of good in a 
fellow-being, has not dwelt with pleasure on the 
thought that Lord Byron’s unhappy career was 
ennobled and purified towards its close by a high 
and sympathetic purpose, by honest and energetic 
efforts for his fellow-men? Who has not read 
with deep emotion those last pathetic lines, beauti- 
ful as the after-glow of sunset, in which love and 
resignation are mingled with something of a melan- 
choly heroism? Who has not lingered with com- 
passion over the dying scene at Missolonghi, — the 
sufferer’s inability to make his farewell messages of 
love intelligible, and the last long hours of silent 
pain? Yet for the sake of furnishing his disciples 
with a “ready reply,” Dr. Cumming can prevail on 
himself to inoculate them with a bad-spirited falsity 
like the following : — 


‘We have one striking exhibition of an infidel’s 
brightest thoughts in some lines written in his dying 
moments by a man gifted with great genius, capable 
of prodigious intellectual prowess, but of worthless 
principle and yet more worthless practices, — 1 mean 
the celebrated Lord Byron. He says: — 


‘Though gay companions o’er the bowl 
Dispel awhile the sense of ill, 
Though pleasure fills the maddening soul, 
The heart — the heart is lonely still. 


272 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


‘Ay, but to die, and go, alas! 
Where all have gone and all must g0 
To be the Nothing that I was, 
Ere born to life and living woe! 


‘Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o’er thy days from anguish free, 
And know, whatever thou hast been, 
’T is something better not to be. 


‘Nay, for myself, so dark my fate 
Through every turn of life hath been, 
Man and the world so much I hate, 
I care not when I quit the scene.’ ” 


It is difficult to suppose that Dr. Cumming can 
have been so grossly imposed upon, —that he can 
be so ill-informed as really to believe that these lines 
were “written” by Lord Byron in his dying mo- 
ments; but, allowing him the full benefit of that 
possibility, how shall we explain his introduction 
of this feebly rabid doggerel as “an infidel’s bright- 
est thoughts ” ? 

In marshalling the evidences of Christianity, Dr. 
Cumming directs most of his arguments against 
opinions that are either totally imaginary or that 
belong to the past rather than to the present, while 
he entirely fails to meet the difficulties actually felt 
and urged by those who are unable to accept Reve- 
lation. There can hardly be a stronger proof of 
misconception as to the character of free-thinking 
in the present day, than the recommendation of 
Leland’s “Short and Easy Method with the Deists,” 
—a method which is unquestionably short and 
easy for preachers disinclined to reconsider their 
stereotyped modes of thinking and arguing, but 
which has quite ceased to realize those epithets in 
the conversion of Deists. Yet Dr. Cumming not 
only recommends this book, but takes the trouble 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 273 


himself to write a feebler version of its arguments. 
For example, on the question of the genuineness 
and authenticity of the New Testament writings, he 
says: “If, therefore, at a period long subsequent to 
the death of Christ, a number of men had appeared 
in the world, drawn up a book which they christ- 
ened by the name of the Holy Scripture, and recorded 
these things which appear in it as facts when they 
were only the fancies of their own imagination, 
surely the Jews would have instantly reclaimed 
that no such events transpired, that no such person 
as Jesus Christ appeared in their capital, and that 
ther crucifixion of him, and their alleged evil treat- 
ment of his apostles, were mere fictions.”+ It is 
scarcely necessary to say that, in such argument as 
this, Dr. Cumming is beating the air. He is meet- 
ing a hypothesis which no one holds, and totally 
missing the real question. The only type of “ infi- 
del” whose existence Dr. Cumming recognizes is 
that fossil personage who “calls the Bible a lie and 
a forgery.” He seems to be ignorant — or he chooses 
to ignore the fact —that there is a large body of 
eminently instructed and earnest men who regard 
the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures as a series of 
historical documents, to be dealt with according to 
the rules of historical criticism, and that an equally 
_ large number of men, who are not historical critics, 

find the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the 
Scriptures opposed to their profoundest moral con- 
victions. Dr. Cumming’s infidel is a man who, 
because his life is vicious, tries to convince himself 
that there is no God, and that Christianity is an 
imposture, but who is all the while secretly con- 
scious that he is opposing the truth, and cannot 


1 Man. of Evidences, p. 81, 
VOL. 11. — 18 


274 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


help “letting out” admissions “that the Bible is 
the Book of God.” We are favoured with the fol- 
lowing “ Creed of the Infidel: 7 — 


‘¢T believe that there is no God, but that matter is 
God, and’God is matter; and that it is no matter 
whether there is any God or not. I believe also that the 
world was not made, but that the world made itself, or 
that it had no beginning, and that it will last forever. 
I believe that man is a beast; that the soul is the body, 
and that the body is the soul; and that after death 
there is neither body nor soul. I believe that there 
is no religion, that natural religion is the only reli- 
gion, and all religion unnatural, I believe not in 
Moses; I believe in the first philosophers. I believe 
not in the evangelists; I believe in Chubb, Collins, 
Toland, Tindal, and Hobbes. I believe in Lord Boling- 
broke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I believe not 
in revelation; I believe in tradition ; I believe in the 
Talmud ; I believe in the Kordn: I believe not in the 
Bible. I believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius; 
T believe in Mahomet; I believe not in Christ. And 
lastly I believe in all unbelief.” 


The intellectual and moral monster whose creed 
is this complex web of contradictions is, moreover, 
according to Dr. Cumming, a being who unites 
much simplicity and imbecility with his Satanic 
hardihood, much tenderness of conscience with 
his obdurate vice. Hear the “ proof: ” — 


‘©T once met with an acute and enlightened infidel, 
with whom I reasoned day after day, and for hours 
together; I submitted to him the internal, the external, 
and the experimental evidences, but made no impres- 
sion on his scorn and unbelief. At length I enter- 
tained a suspicion that there was something morally 
rather than intellectually wrong, and that the bias 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 275 


was not in the intellect but in the heart; one day 
therefore I said to him, ‘I must now state my convic- 
tion, and you may call me uncharitable, but duty com- 
pels me; you are living in some known and gross sin.’ 
The man’s countenance became pale; he bowed and 
loje me. * 


Here we have the remarkable psychological phe- 
nomenon of an “acute and enlightened ” man who 
deliberately purposing to indulge in a favourite sin, 
and regarding the Gospel with scorn and unbelief, 
is, nevertheless, so much more scrupulous than the 
majority of Christians, that he cannot “ embrace sin 
and the Gospel simultaneously ;” who is so alarmed 
at the Gospel in which he does not believe, that he 
cannot be easy without trying to crush it; whose 
acuteness and enlightenment suggest to him, as a 
means of crushing the Gospel, to argue from day to 
day with Dr. Cumming; and who is withal so naive 
that he is taken by surprise when Dr. Cumming, 
failing in argument, resorts to accusation, and so 
tender in conscience that, at the mention of his sin, 
he turns pale and leaves the spot. If there be any 
human mind in existence capable of holding Dr. 
Cumming’s “ Creed of the Infidel,” of at the same 
time believing in tradition and “ believing in all 
unbelief,” it must be the mind of the infidel just 
described, for whose existence we have Dr. Cum- 
ming’s ex officio word asa theologian; and to theo- 
logians we may apply what Sancho Panza says of 
the bachelors of Salamanca, that they never tell 
lies, — except when it suits their purpose. 

The total absence from Dr. Cumming’s theologi- 
cal mind of any demarcation between fact and 


1 Man. of Evidences, p. 254. 


276 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


rhetoric is exhibited in another passage, where he 
adopts the dramatic form :— 


“ Ask the peasant on the hill—and I have asked 
amid the mountains of Braemar and Deeside, — ‘ How 
do you know that this book is divine, aud that the reli- 
gion you profess is true? You never read Paley ?’ 
‘No, I never heard of him.’ ‘You have never read 
Butler?’ ‘No, I have never heard of him.’ ‘Nor 
Chalmers?’ ‘No, I do not know him.’ ‘You have 
never read any books on evidence ?’ ‘No, I have read 
no such books.’ ‘Then how do you know this book is 
true?’ ‘Know it! Tell me that the Dee, the Clunie, 
and the Garrawalt, the streams at my feet, do not run; 
that the winds do not sigh amid the gorges of these 
blue hills; that the sun does not kindle the peaks of 
Loch-na-Gar; tell me my heart does not beat, and I 
will believe you; but do not tell me the Bible is not 
divine. J have found its truth illuminating my foot- 
steps; its consolations sustaining my heart. May my 
tongue cleave to my mouth’s roof, and my right hand 
forget its cunning, if I ever deny what is my deepest 
inner experience, that this blessed book is the book of 


CGoar eb ei 


Dr. Cumming is so slippery and Jax in his mode 
of presentation that we find it impossible to gather 
whether he means to assert that this is what a 
peasant on the mountains of Braemar did say, or 
that it is what such a peasant would say: in the 
one case the passage may be taken as a measure of 
his truthfulness; in the other, of his judgment. 

His own faith, apparently, has not been alto- 
eether intuitive, like that of his rhetorical peasant, 
for he tells us? that he has himself experienced 
what it is to have religious doubts. “I was 


1 Church before the Flood, p. 35. 2 Apoc. Sketches, p. 405. 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 277 


tainted while at the University by this spirit of 
scepticism. I thought Christianity might not be 
true. The very possibility of its being true was 
the thought I felt I must meet and settle. Con- 
science could give me no peace till [ had settled 
it. I read, and [I have read from that day, for 
fourteen or fifteen years, till this, and now I am 
as convinced, upon the clearest evidence, that this 
book is the book of God as that I now address 
you.” This experience, however, instead of im- 
pressing on him the fact that doubt may be the 
stamp of a truth-loving mind, —that sunt quibus 
non credidisse honor est, et fider future pignus, — 
seems to have produced precisely the contrary 
effect. It has not enabled him even to conceive 
the condition of a mind “ perplexed in faith but 
pure in deeds,” craving light, yearning for a faith 
that will harmonize and cherish its highest powers 
and aspirations, but unable to find that faith in 
dogmatic Christianity. His own doubts apparently 
were of a different kind. Nowhere in his pages 
have we found a humble, candid, sympathetic 
attempt to meet the difficulties that may be felt 
by an ingenuous mind. Everywhere he supposes 
that the doubter is hardened, conceited, con- 
sciously shutting his eyes to the heht, —a fool 
who is to be answered according to his folly, — 
that is, with ready replies made up of reckless 
assertions, of apocryphal anecdotes, and, where 
other resources fail, of vituperative imputation. 
As to the reading which he has prosecuted for 
fifteen years, — either it has left him totally igno- 
rant of the relation which his own religious creed 
bears to the criticism and philosophy of the nine- 
teenth century, or he systematically blinks that 


278 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


criticism and that philosophy; and instead of hon- 
estly and seriously endeavouring to meet and solve 
what he knows to be the real difficulties, contents 
himself with setting up popinjays to shoot at, for 
the sake of confirming the ignorance and winning 
the cheap admiration of his evangelical hearers 
and readers. Like .the Catholic preacher who, 
alter throwing down his cap and apostrophizing it 
as Luther, turned to his audience and said, “ You 
see this heretical fellow has not a word to say for 
himself,” Dr. Cumming, having drawn his ugly 
portzait of the infidel, and put arguments of a con- 
venient quality into his mouth, finds a “ short and 
easy method ” of confounding this “ croaking frog. ” 

In his treatment of infidels, we imagine he is 
guided by a mental process which may be ex- 
pressed in the following syllogism: Whatever 
tends to the vlory of God is true; it is for the 
glory of God that infidels should be as bad as 
possible; therefore whatever tends to show that 
infidels are as bad as possible is true. All infidels, 
he tells us, have been men of “ gross and licentious 
lives.” Is there not some well-known unbeliever 
— David Hume, for example — of whom even Dr. 
Cumming’s readers may have heard as an excep- 
tion? No matter. Some one suspected that he 
was not an exception; and as that suspicion tends 
to the glory of God, it is one for a Christian to 
entertain. If we were unable to imagine this kind 
of self-sophistication, we should be obliged to sup- 
pose that, relying on the ignorance of his evangeli- 
cal disciples, he fed them with direct and conscious 
falsehoods. “ Voltaire,” he informs them, “ de- 
clares there is no God;” he was “ an antitheist, 


1 See Man. of Evidences, p. 73. 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 279 


that is, one who deliberately and avowedly opposed 
and hated God, who swore in his blasphemy that 
he would dethrone him,” and “ advocated the very 
depths of the lowest sensuality.” With regard 
to many statements of a similar kind, equally at 
variance with truth, in Dr. Cumming’s volumes, 
we presume that he has been misled by hearsay 
or by the second-hand character of his acquaint- 
ance with free-thinking literature. An evangelli- 
cal preacher is not obliged to be well-read. Here, 
however, is a case which the extremest supposition 
cf educated ignorance will not reach. Even books 
of “evidences” quote from Voltaire the line, — 


‘¢Si Dieu n’existait pas, il audrait Vinventer ; ” 


even persons fed on the mere whey and buttermilk 
of literature must know that in philosophy Vol- 
taire was nothing if not a theist, — must know 
that he wrote not against God, but against Jeho- 
vah, the God of the Jews, whom he believed to be 
a false God, — must know that to say Voltaire was 
an atheist on this ground is as absurd as to say 
that a Jacobite opposed hereditary monarchy be- 
cause he declared the Brunswick family had no 
title to the throne. That Dr. Cumming should 
repeat the vulgar fables about Voltaire’s death is 
merely what we might expect from the specimens 
we have seen of his illustrative stories. A man 
whose accounts of his own experience are apocry- 
phal is not hkely to put borrowed narratives to 
any severe test. 

The alliance between intellectual and moral per- 
version is strikingly typified by the way in which 
he alternates from the unveracious to the absurd, 
from misrepresentation to contradiction. Side by 


280 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


side with the adduction of “ facts” such as those 
we have quoted, we find him arguing on one page 
that the Trinity was too grand a doctrine to have 
been conceived by man, and was therefore Divine; 
and on another page, that the Incarnation had 
been preconceived by man, and is therefore to be 
accepted as Divine. But we are less concerned 
with the fallacy of his “ ready replies ” than with 
their falsity; and even of this we can only aiford 
space for a very few specimens. Here is one: 
“There is a thousand times more proof that the 
gospel of John was written by him than there is 
that the AvaBacis was written by Xenophon, or 
the Ars Poetica by Horace.” If Dr. Cumming had 
chosen Plato’s Epistles or Anacreon’s Poems, in- 
stead of the Anabasis or the Ars Poetica, he would 
have reduced the extent of the falsehood, and 
would have furnished a ready reply which would 
have been equally effective with his Sunday-school 
teachers and their disputants. Hence we conclude 
this prodigality of misstatement, this exuberance 
of mendacity, is an effervescence of zeal wm mayo- 
rem gloriam Der. Elsewhere he tells us that “ the 
idea of the author of the ‘ Vestiges’ is that man 
is the development of a monkey, that the monkey 
is the embryo man, so that af you keep a baboon 
long enough, it will develop itself into a man.” 
How well Dr. Cumming has qualified himself to 
judge of the ideas in “ that very unphilosophical 
book,” as he pronounces it, may be inferred from 
the fact that he imphes the author of the “ Ves- 
tiges ” to have originated the nebular hypothesis. 
In the volume from which the last extract is 
taken, even the hardihood of assertion is surpassed 
by the suicidal character of the argument. It is 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 281 


called “The Church before the Flood,” and is de- 
voted chiefly to the adjustment of the question 
between the Bible and Geology. Keeping within 
the limits we have prescribed to ourselves, we do 
not enter into the matter of this discussion; we 
merely pause a little over the volume in order to 
point out Dr. Cumming’s mode of treating. the 
question. He first tells us that “the Bible has 
not a single scientific error in it;” that “ ¢ts slightest 
intimations of scientific principles or natural phe- 
nomena have in every instance been demonstrated to 
be exactly and strictly true,” and he asks:— 


‘¢ How is it that Moses, with no greater education 
than the Hindoo or the ancient philosopher, has writ- 
ten his book, touching science at a thousand points, so 
accurately that scientific research has discovered no 
flaws in it; and yet in those investigations which have 
taken place in more recent centuries, it has not been 
shown that he has committed one single error, or made 
one solitary assertion which can be proved by the ma- 
turest science or by the most eagle-eyed philosopher 
to be incorrect, scientifically or historically? ”’ 


According to this, the relation of the Bible to 
Science should be one of the strong points of apolo- 
gists for Revelation; the scientific accuracy of 
Moses should stand at the head of their evidences ; 
and they might urge, with some cogency, that since 
Aristotle, who devoted himself to science, and 
lived many ages after Moses, does little else than 
err ingeniously, this fact, that the Jewish Law- 
giver, though touching science at a thousand 
points, has written nothing that has not been 
“demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true,” is 
an irrefragable proof of his having derived his 


282 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


knowledge from a supernatural source. How does 
it happen, then, that Dr. Cumming forsakes this 
strong position? How is it that we find him, 
some pages further on, engaged in reconciling 
Genesis with the discoveries of science, by means 
of imaginative hypotheses and feats of “ interpre- 
tation”? Surely, that which has been demon- 
strated to be exactly and strictly true does not 
require hypothesis and critical argument, in order 
to show that it may possibly agree with those very 
discoveries by means of which its exact and strict 
truth has been demonstrated. And why should 
Dr. Cumming suppose, as we shall presently find 
him supposing, that men of science hesitate to 
accept the Bible, because it appears to contradict 
their discoveries? By his own statement, that 
appearance of contradiction does not exist; on the 
contrary, it has been demonstrated that the Bible 
precisely agrees with their discoveries. Perhaps, 
however, in saying of the Bible that its “ slightest 
intimations of scientific principles or natural phe- 
nomena have in every instance been demonstrated 
to be exactly and strictly true,” Dr. Cumming 
merely means to imply that theologians have found 
out a way of explaining the biblical text so that it 
no longer, in their opinion, appears to be in con- 
tradiction with the discoveries of science. One of 
two things, therefore: either he uses language 
without the slightest appreciation of its real mean- 
ing; or the assertions he makes on one page are 
directly contradicted by the arguments he urges on 
another. 

Dr. Cumming’s principles — or, we should rather 
say, confused notions — of biblical interpretation, 
as exhibited in this volume, are particularly sig- 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 283 


nificant of his mental calibre. He says:! “ Men 
of science, who are full of scientific investigation 
and enamoured of scientific discovery, will hesi- 
tate before they accept a book which, they think, 
contradicts the plainest and the most unequivocal 
disclosures they have made in the bowels of the 
earth or among the stars of the sky. To all these 
we answer, as we have already indicated, there is 
not the least dissonance between God’s written 
book and the most mature discoveries of geological 
science. One thing, however, there may be: there 
may be a contradiction between the discoveries of 
geology and our preconceived interpretations of the 
Bible. But this is not because the Bible is wrong, 


but because our interpretation is wrong.” (The 
italics in all cases are our own.) 
Elsewhere he says: “It seems to me plainly 


evident that the record of Genesis, when read fairly 
and not in the light of our prejudices, — and, mind 
you, the essence of Popery is to read the Bible in 
the light of our opinions, instead of viewing our 
opinions in the light of the Bible, in rts plain and 
obvious sense, — falls in perfectly with the assertion 
of geologists. ” 

On comparing these two passages, we gather 
that when Dr. Cumming, under stress of geological 
discovery, assigns to the biblical text a meaning 
entirely different from that which, on his own 
showing, was universally ascribed to it for more 
than three thousand years, he regards himself as 
“viewing his opinions in the light of the Bible in 
its plain and obvious sense”! Now he is reduced 
to one of two alternatives: either he must hold 
that the “plain and obvious meaning” of the 


1 Church before the Flood, p. 93. 


284 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


whole Bible differs from age to age, so that the 
criterion of its meaning Hes in the sum of knowl- 
edge possessed by each successive age, — the Bible 
being an elastic garment for the growing thought 
of mankind; or he must hold that some portions 
are amenable to this criterion, and others not so. 
In the former case he accepts the principle of in- 
terpretation adopted by the early German rational- 
ists; in the latter case he has to show a further 
criterion by which we can judge what parts of the 
Bible are elastic and what rigid.. If he says that 
the interpretation of the text is rigid wherever it 
treats of doctrines necessary to salvation, we an- 
swer that for doctrines to be necessary to salvation 
they must first be true; and in order to be true, 
according to his own principle, they must be 
founded on a correct interpretation of the biblical 
text. Thus he makes the necessity of doctrines to 
salvation the criterion of infallible interpretation, 
and infallible interpretation the criterion of doc- 
trines being necessary to salvation. He is whirled 
round in a circle, having, by admitting the prin- 
ciple of novelty in interpretation, completely de- 
prived himself of a basis. That he should seize 
the very moment in which he is most palpably 
betraying that he has no test of biblical truth be- 
yond his own opinion, as an appropriate occasion 
for flinging the rather novel reproach against Popery 
that its essence is to “ read the Bible in the light 
of our opinions,” would be an almost pathetic self- 
exposure, if it were not disgusting. Imbecility 
that is not even meek ceases to be pitiable and 
becomes simply odious. 

Parenthetic lashes of this kind against Popery are 
very frequent with Dr. Cumming, and occur even 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 285 


in his more devout passages, where their introduc- 
tion must surely disturb the spiritual exercises of 
his hearers. Indeed, Roman Catholics fare worse 
with him even than infidels. Infidels are the 
small vermin, —the mice to he bagged en passant. 
The main object of his chase — the rats which are to 
be nailed up as trophies — are the Roman Catholics. 
Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan; but reas- 
sure yourselves! Dr. Cumming has been created. 
Antichrist is enthroned in the Vatican; but he is 
stoutly withstood by the Boanerges of Crown Court. 
The personality of Satan, as might be expected, is 
a very prominent tenet in Dr. Cumming’s dis- 
courses; those who doubt it are, he thinks, “ gen- 
erally specimens of the victims of Satan as a 
triumphant seducer ;” and it is through the medium 
of this doctrine that he habitually contemplates 
Roman Catholics. They are the puppets of which 
the Devil holds the strings. It is only exception- 
ally that he speaks of them as fellow-men, acted 
on by the same desires, fears, and hopes as him- 
self; his rule is to hold them up to his hearers as 
foredoomed instruments of Satan, and vessels of 
wrath. If he is obliged to admit that they are 
“no shams,” that they are “ thoroughly in earnest, ” 
that is because they are inspired by hell, because 
they are under an “ infra-natural” influence. If 
their missionaries are found wherever Protestant 
missionaries go, this zeal in propagating their 
faith is not in them a consistent virtue, as it is in 
Protestants, but a “melancholy fact,” affording 
additional evidence that they are instigated and 
assisted by the Devil. And Dr. Cumming is in- 
clined to think that they work miracles, because 
that is no more than might be expected from the 


2386 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


known ability of Satan, who inspires them.! He 
admits, indeed, that “there is a fragment of the 
Church of Christ in the very bosom of that awful 
apostasy,” 2 and that there are members of the 
Church of Rome in glory; but this admission is 
rare and episodical, —is a declaration, pro formd, 
about as influential on the general disposition and 
habits as an aristocrat’s profession of democracy. 
This leads us to mention another conspicuous 
characteristic of Dr. Cumming’s teaching, — the 
absence of genuine charity. It is true that he makes 
large profession of tolerance and liberality within 
a certain circle; he exhorts Christians to unity; he 
would have Churchmen fraternize with Dissenters, 
and exhorts these two branches of God’s family to 
defer the settlement of their differences till the 
millennium. But the love thus taught is the love 
of the clan, which is the correlative of antagonism 
to the rest of mankind. It is not sympathy and 
helpfulness towards men as men, but towards men 
as Christians, and as Christians in the sense of 
a small minority. Dr. Cumming’s religion may 
demand a tribute of love, but it gives a charter to 
hatred; 1t may enjoin charity, but it fosters all 
uncharitableness. If I believe that God tells me 
to love my enemies, but at the same time hates 
his own enemies and requires me to have one will 
with him, which has the larger scope, love or 
hatred? And we refer to those pages of Dr. 
Cumming’s in which he opposes Roman Catholics, 
Puseyites, and Infidels, — pages which form the 
larger proportion of what he has published, — for 
proof that the idea of God which both the logic 
and spirit of his discourses keep present to his 
1 Signs of the Times, p. 38. 2 Apoc. Sketches, p. 243. 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 287 


hearers, 1s that of a God who hates his enemies, a 
God who teaches love by fierce denunciations of 
wrath, a God who encourages obedience to his pre- 
cepts by elaborately revealing to us that his own 
government 1s in precise opposition to those pre- 
cepts. We know the usual evasions on this sub. 
ject. We know Dr. Cumming would say that even 
Roman Catholics are to be loved and succoured as 
men; that he would help even that “ unclean 
spirit,” Cardinal Wiseman, out of a ditch. But 
who that is in the slightest degree acquainted 
with the action of the human mind, will believe 
that any genuine and large charity can grow out 
of an exercise of love which is always to have an 
arriere-pensée of hatred? Of what quality would 
be the conjugal love of a husband who loved his 
spouse as a wife, but hated her as a woman? It 
is reserved for the regenerate mind, according to 
Dr. Cumming’s conception of it, to be “ wise, 
amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral, 
in a moment.” Precepts of charity uttered with 
faint breath at the end of a sermon are perfectly 
futile, when all the force of the lungs has been 
spent in keeping the hearer’s mind fixed on the 
conception of his fellow-men, not as fellow-sinners 
and fellow-sufferers, but as agents of hell, as auto- 
mata through whom Satan plays his game upon 
earth, —not on objects which call forth their rev- 
erence, their love, their hope of good even in the 
most strayed and perverted, but on a minute 
identification of human things with such symbols 
as the scarlet whore, the beast out of the abyss, 
scorpions whose sting is in their tails, men who 
have the mark of the beast, and unclean spirits like 
frogs. You might as well attempt to educate a 


288 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


child’s sense of beauty by hanging its nursery 
with the horrible and grotesque pictures in which 
the early painters represented the Last Judgment, 
as expect Christian graces to flourish on that pro- 
phetic interpretation which Dr Cumming offers 
as the principal nutriment of his flock. Quite 
apart from the critical basis of that interpretation, 
quite apart from the degree of truth there may be 
in Dr. Cumming’s prognostications, — questions 
into which we do not choose to enter, — his use of 
prophecy must be @ priorz condemned in the judg- 
ment of right-minded persons, by its results as tes- 
tified in the net moral effect of his sermons. The 
best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely 
inspired system believe that the great end of the 
Gospel is not merely the saving but the educating 
of men’s souls, the creating within them of holy 
dispositions, the subduing of egoistical preten- 
sions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire 
that the will of God —a will synonymous with 
goodness and truth — may be done on earth. But 
what relation to all this has a system of interpre- 
tation which keeps the mind of the Christian in 
the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show, 
of which Satan is the wild beast in the shape of 
the great red dragon, and two thirds of mankind 
the victims, — the whole provided and got up by 
God for the edification of the saints? The demon- 
stration that the Second Advent is at hand, if 
true, can have no really holy, spiritual effect; the 
highest state of mind inculcated by the Gospel is 
resignation to the disposal of God’s providence, — 
“Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether 
we die, we die unto the Lord,” — not an eagerness 
to see a temporal manifestation which shall con- 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 289 


found the enemies of God and give exultation to 
the saints; it is to dwell in Christ by spiritual 
communion with his nature, not to fix the date 
when he shall appear in the sky? Dr. Cumming’s 
delight in shadowing forth the downfall of the 
Man of Sin, in prognosticating the battle of Gog 
and Magog, and in advertising the premillennial 
Advent, is simply the transportation of political 
passions on to a so-called religious platform; it is 
the anticipation of the triumph of “our party,” 
accomplished by our principal men being “ sent 
for” into the clouds. Let us be understood to 
speak in all seriousness. If we were in search of 
amusement, we should not seek for it by examin- 
ing Dr. Cumming’s works in order to ridicule them. 
We are simply discharging a disagreeable duty in 
delivering our opinion that, judged by the highest 
standard even of orthodox Christianity, they are 
little calculated to produce 


“A closer walk with God, 
A calin and heavenly frame ;” 


but are more likely to nourish egoistic complacency 
and pretension, a hard and condemnatory spirit 
towards one’s fellow-men, and a busy occupation 
with the minutie of events, instead of a reverent 
contemplation of great facts and a wise applica- 
tion of great principles. It would be idle to con- 
sider Dr. Cumming’s theory of prophecy in any 
other light; as a philosophy of history or a speci- 
men of biblical interpretation, it bears about the 
same relation to the extension of genuine knowl- 
edge as the astrological “house” in the heavens 
bears to the true structure and relations of the 
universe. 
VOL. 11. —19 


290 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


The slight degree in which Dr. Cumming’s faith 
is imbued with truly human sympathies is ex- 
hibited in the way he treats the doctrine of Eternal 
Punishment. Here a little of that readiness to 
strain the letter of the Scriptures which he so 
often manifests when his object is to prove a point 
against Romanism would have been an amiable 
frailty if it had been applied on the side of mercy. 
When he is bent on proving that the prophecy 
concerning the Man of Sin, in the Second Epistle 
to the Thessalonians, refers to the Pope, he can 
extort from the innocent word ca@icat the meaning 
cathedrize, though why we are to translate “ He as 
God cathedrizes in the temple of God,” any more 
than we are to translate “ Cathedrize here while I 
go and pray yonder,” it is for Dr. Cumming to 
show more clearly than he has yet done. But — 
when rigorous literality will favour the conclusion 
that the greater proportion of the human race will 
be eternally miserable, — then he is rigorously 
literal. 

He says; “The Greek words, eés Tovs atwvas 
Tov aisévev, here translated ‘ everlasting,’ signify 
literally ‘ unto the ages of ages;’ avet wy, “ always 
being,’ that is, everlasting, ceaseless existence. 
Plato uses the word in this sense when he says, 
‘The Gods that live forever.’ But I must also 
admit, that this word is used several times in a 
limited extent, —as, for instance, ‘ The everlast- 
ing hills.’ Of course, this does not mean that 
there never will be a time when the hills will 
cease to stand; the expression here is evidently 
figurative, but it implies eternity. The hills shall 
remain as long as that earth lasts, and no hand 
has power to remove them but that Eternal One 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 291 


which first called them into being; so the state of 
the soul remains the same after death as long as 
the soul exists, and no one has power to alter it. 
The same word is often applied to denote the 
existence of God, —‘ the Eternal God.’ Can we 
limit the word when applied to him? Because 
occasionally used in a limited sense, we must not 
infer it is always so. ‘ Everlasting ’ plainly means 
in Scripture ‘ without end;’ it is only to be ex- 
plained figuratively when it is evident it cannot 
be interpreted in any other way.” 

We do not discuss whether Dr. Cumming’s in- 
terpretation accords with the meaning of the New 
Testament writers: we simply point to the fact 
that the text becomes elastic for him when he 
wants freer play for his prejudices, while he makes 
it an adamantine barrier against the admission 
that mercy will ultimately triumph, — that God, 
a. €., Love, will be all in all. He assures us that 
he does not “delight to dwell on the misery of 
the lost;” and we believe him. That misery does 
not seem to be a question of feeling with him, 
either one way or the other He does not merely 
resign himself to the awful mystery of eternal 
punishment; he contends for it. Do we object, 
he asks,’ to everlasting happiness? then why 
object to everlasting misery ?— reasoning which is 
perhaps felt to be cogent by theologians who an- 
ticipate the everlasting happiness for themselves 
and the everlasting misery for their neighbours. 

The compassion of some Christians has been 
glad to take refuge in the opinion that the Bible 
allows the supposition of annihilation for the 
impenitent; but the rigid sequence of Dr. Cum- 

1 Man. of Christ. Evidences, p. 184. 


292 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


ming’s reasoning will not admit of this idea. He 
sees that flax is made into linen, and linen into 
paper; that paper, when burned, partly ascends as 
smoke and then again descends in rain or in dust 
and carbon. “Not one particle of the original 
flax is lost, although there may be not one particle 
that has not undergone an entire change: annihi- 
lation is not, but change of formis. J¢ will be thus 
with our bodies at the resurrection. The death ot 
the body means not annihilation. Not one feature 
of the face will be annihilated.” Having estab- 
lished the perpetuity of the body by this close and 
clear analogy, namely, that as there is a total 
change in the particles of flax in consequence of 
which they no longer appear as flax, so there will 
not be a total change in the particles of the human 
body, but they will reappear as the human body, 
he does not seem to consider that the perpetuity of 
the body involves the perpetuity of the soul, but 
requires separate evidence for this, and finds such 
evidence by begging the very question at issue; 
namely, by asserting that the text of the Scriptures 
implies “ the perpetuity of the punishment of the 
lost, and the consciousness of the punishment 
which they endure.” Yet it is drivelling like this 
which is listened to and lauded as eloquence by 
hundreds, and which a Doctor of Divinity can 
believe that he has his “ reward as a saint” for 
preaching and publishing! 

One more characteristic of Dr. Cumming’s writ- 
ings, and we have done. This is the perverted 
moral judgment that everywhere reigns in them. 
Not that this perversion is peculiar to Dr. Cum- 
ming: it belongs to the dogmatic system which 
he shares with all evangelical believers. But the 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 293 


abstract tendencies of systems are represented in 
very different degrees according to the different 
characters of those who embrace them, just as the 
same food tells differently on different constitu- 
tions; and there are certain qualities in Dr. 
Cumming that cause the perversion of which we 
speak to exhibit itself with peculiar prominence in 
his teaching. A single extract will enable us to 
explain what we mean. 


‘‘The ‘thoughts’ are evil. Ifit were possible for 
human eye to discern and to detect the thoughts that 
flutter around the heart of an unregenerate man, to 
mark their hue and their multitude, it would be found 
that they are indeed ‘evil.’ We speak not of the thief, 
and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, 
whose crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tri- 
bunals, and whose unenviable character it is to take the 
lead in the paths of sin; but we refer to the men who 
are marked out by their practice of many of the seemli- 
est moralities of life, — by the exercise of the kindliest 
affections, and the interchange of the sweetest recipro- 
cities, — and of these men, if unrenewed and unchanged, 
we pronounce that their thoughts are evil. To ascer- 
tain this, we must refer to the object around which our 
thoughts ought continually to circulate. The Scrip- 
tures assert that this object is the glory of God; that 
for this we ought to think, to act, and to speak; and 
that in thus thinking, acting, and speaking, there is 
involved the purest and most enduring bliss. Now it 
will be found true of the most amiable men, that with 
all their good society and kindliness of heart, and all 
their strict and unbending integrity, they never or 
rarely think of the glory of God. The question never 
occurs to them, Will this redound to the glory of God ? 
Will this make his name more known, his being more 
loved, his praise more sung? And just inasmuch as 


294 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


their every thought comes short of this lofty aim, 1n so 
much does it come short of good, and entitle itself to 
the character of evil. If the glory of God is not the 
absorbing and the influential aim of their thoughts, 
then they are evil; but God’s glory never enters into 
their minds. They are amiable, because it chances to 
be one of the constitutional tendencies of their individ- 
ual character, left uneffaced by the Fall; and they are 
just and upright, because they have perhaps no occa- 
sion to be otherwise, or find it subservient to their 
interests to maintain such a character.” ? 


Again we read :? — 


‘¢There are traits in the Christian character which 
the mere worldly man cannot understand. He can 
understand the outward morality, but he cannot under- 
stand the inner spring of it; he can understand Dorcas’ 
liberality to the poor, but he cannot penetrate the 
ground of Dorcas’ liberality. Some men give to the 
poor because they are ostentatious, or because they think 
the poor will ultimately avenge their neglect ; but the 
Christian gives to the poor, not only because he has 
sensibilities like other men, but because, ‘inasmuch as 
ye did it to the least of these my brethren, ye did it 
unto me.’ ” 


Before entering on the more general question in- 
volved in these quotations, we must point to the 
clauses we have marked with italics, where Dr. 
Cumming appears to express sentiments which, we 
are happy to think, are not shared by the majority 
of his brethren in the faith, Dr. Cumming, it 
seems, is unable to conceive that the natural man 
can have any other motive for being just and 
upright than that it is useless to be otherwise, or 
that a character for honesty is profitable ; according 

! Oce. Disc. vol. p.28. 2 Ibid. p. 236. 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 295 


to his experience, between the feelings of ostenta- 
tion and selfish alarm and the feeling of love to 
Christ, there lie no sensibilities which can lead a 
man to relieve want. Granting, as we should pre- 
fer to think, that it is Dr. Cumming’s exposition 
of his sentiments which is deficient rather than 
his sentiments themselves, still the fact that the 
deficiency lies precisely here, and that he can 
overlook it not only in the haste of oral delivery 
but in the examination of proof-sheets, is strongly 
significant of his mental bias, of the faint degree 
in which he sympathizes with the disinterested 
elements of human feeling, and of the fact, which 
we are about to dwell upon, that those feelings are 
totally absent from his religious theory. Now, 
Dr. Cumming invariably assumes that, in fulmi- 
nating against those who differ from him, he is 
standing on a moral elevation to which they are 
compell led reluctantly to look up; that his theory 
of motives and conduct is in its loftiness and 
purity a perpetual rebuke to their low and vicious 
desires and practice. It is time he should be told 
that the reverse is the fact; that there are men 
who do not merely cast a superficial glance at his 
doctrine, and fail to see its beauty or justice, but 
who, after a close consideration of that doctrine, 
pronounce it to be subversive of true moral devel- 
opment, and therefore positively noxious. Dr. 
Cumming is fond of showing up the teaching of 
Romanism, and accusing it ‘of undermining true 
morality: it is time he i iould be told that there 
is a large body, both of thinkers and practical 
men, who hold precisely the same opinion of his 
own teaching, — with this difference, that they do 
not regard it as the inspiration of Satan, but as 


296 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


the natural crop of a human mind where the soil 
is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dog- 
matic beliefs. 

Dr. Cumming’s theory, as we have seen, is that 
actions are good or evil according as they are 
prompted or not prompted by an exclusive refer- 
ence to the “glory of God.” God, then, in Dr. 
Cumming’s conception, is a being who has no 
pleasure in the exercise of love and truthfulness 
and justice, considered as affecting the well-being 
of his creatures; he has satisfaction in us only in 
so far as we exhaust our motives and dispositions 
of all relation to our fellow-beings, and replace 
sympathy with men by anxiety for the “glory of 
God.” The deed of Grace Darling, when she took 
a boat in the storm to rescue drowning men and 
women, was not good if it was only compassion 
that nerved her arm and impelled her to brave 
death for the chance of saving others; it was only 
good if she asked herself, Will this redound to the 
glory of God? The man who endures tortures 
rather than betray a trust, the man who spends 
years in toil in order to discharge an obligation 
from which the law declares him free, must be 
animated not by the spirit of fidelity to his fellow- 
man, but by a desire to make “the name of God 
more known.” The sweet charities of domestic 
life, —the ready hand and the soothing word in 
sickness, the forbearance towards frailties, the 
prompt helpfulness in all efforts and sympathy in 
all joys, are simply evil if they result from a 
“constitutional tendency,” or from dispositions 
disciplined by the experience of suffering and the 
perception of moral loveliness. A wife is not to 
devote herself to her husband out of love to him 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR CUMMING. 297 


and a sense of the duties implied by a close rela- 
tion, —she is to be a faithful wife for the glory 
of God. If she feels her natural affections welling 
up too strongly, she is to repress them; it will 
not do to act from natural affection, — she must 
think of the glory of God. A man is to guide his 
affairs with energy and discretion, not from an 
honest desire to fulfil his responsibilities as a 
member of society and a father, but — that “ God’s 
praise may be sung.” Dr. Cumming’s Christian 
pays his debts for the glory of God; were it not 
for the coercion of that supreme motive, it would 
be evil to pay them. A man is not to be just from 
a feeling of justice; he is not to help his fellow- 
men out of good-will to his fellow-men; he is not 
to be a tender husband and father out of affection : 
all these natural muscles and fibres are to be torn 
away and replaced by a patent steel-spring, — 
anxiety for the “glory of God.” 

Happily, the constitution of human nature for- 
bids the complete prevalence of such a theory. 
Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, 
human nature is stronger and wider than religious 
systems; and though dogmas may hamper, they 
cannot absolutely repress its growth: build walls 
round the living tree as you will, the bricks and 
mortar have by and by to give way before the 
‘slow and sure operation of the sap. But next to 
that hatred of the enemies of God which is the 
principle of persecution, there perhaps has been 
no perversion more obstructive of true moral de- 
velopment than this substitution of a reference to 
the glory of God for the direct promptings of the 
sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are 
strong only in proportion as they are directly and 


298 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


inevitably called into activity by their proper 
objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly 
impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as 
it is compassion that speaks through the eyes 
when we soothe, and moves the arm when we 
succour, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the 
soothing or the succour be given because another 
being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to be 
one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference, 
of obedience, of self-interest, or vanity. Accessory 
motives may aid in producing an action, but they 
presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and 
conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the 
action of accessory motives will be excluded. If, 
then, as Dr. Cumming inculcates, the glory of God 
is to be “the absorbing and the influential aim ” 
in our thoughts and actions, this must tend to 
neutralize the human sympathies; the stream of 
feeling will be diverted from its natural current in 
order to feed an artificial canal. The idea of God 
is really moral in its influence —it really cherishes 
all that is best and loveliest in man — only when 
God is contemplated as sympathizing with the 
pure elements of human feeling, as possessing in- 
finitely all those attributes which we recognize to 
be moral in humanity. In this light, the idea of 
God and the sense of His presence intensify all 
noble feeling, and encourage all noble effort, on 
the same principle that human sympathy is found 
a source of strength: the brave man feels braver 
when he knows that another stout heart is beating 
time with his; the devoted woman who is wearing 
out her years in patient effort to alleviate suffering 
or save vice from the last stages of degradation, 
finds aid in the pressure of a friendly hand which 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 299 


tells her that there is one who understands her 
deeds, and in her place would do the like. The 
idea of a God who not only sympathizes with all 
we feel and endure for our fellow-men, but who 
will pour new life into our too languid love, and 
give firmness to our vacillating purpose, is an ex- 
tension and multiplication of the effects produced 
by human sympathy; and it has been intensified 
for the better spirits who have been under the 
influence of orthodox Christianity by the contem- 
plation of Jesus as “ God manifest in the flesh. ” 
But Dr. Cumming’s God is the very opposite of 
all this. He is a God who, instead of sharing and 
aiding our human sympathies, is directly in colli- 
sion with them; who, instead of strengthening 
the bond between man and man, by encouraging 
the sense that they are both alike the objects of 
His love and care, thrusts Himself between them 
and forbids them to feel for each other except as 
they have relation to Him. He is a God who, 
instead of adding His solar force to swell the tide 
of those impulses that tend to give humanity a 
common life in which the good of one is the good 
of all, commands us to check those impulses, lest 
they should prevent us from thinking of His glory. 
It is in vain for Dr. Cumming to say that we are 
to love man for God’s sake. With the conception 
of God which his teaching presents, the love of 
man for God’s sake involves, as his writings 
abundantly show, a strong principle of hatred. 
We can only love one being for the sake of another 
when there is an habitual delight in associating 
the idea of those two beings, —that is, when the 
object of our indirect love is a source of joy and 
honour to the object of our direct love; but ac- 


300 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


cording to Dr. Cumming’s theory, the majority of 
mankind — the majority of his neighbours —are 
in precisely the opposite relation to God. His 
soul has no pleasure in them; they belong more to 
Satan than to Him; and if they contribute to His 
glory, it is against their will. Dr. Cumming 
then can only love some men for God’s sake; the 
rest he must in consistency hate for God’s sake. 
There must be many, even in the circle of Dr. 
Cumming’s admirers, who would be revolted by 
the doctrine we have just exposed, if their natural 
good sense and healthy feeling were not early 
stifled by dogmatic beliefs, and their reverence 
misled by pious phrases. But as it is, many a 
rational question, many a generous instinct, is 
repelled as the suggestion of a supernatural enemy, 
or as the ebullition of human pride and corrup- 
tion. This state of inward contradiction can be 
put an end to only by the conviction that the free 
and diligent exertion of the intellect, instead of 
being a sin, is part of their responsibility, — that 
Right and Reason are synonymous. The funda- 
mental faith for man is, faith in the result of a 
brave, honest, and steady use of all his faculties : 


‘‘ Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul according well 

May make one music as before, 
But vaster.” 


Before taking leave of Dr. Cumming, let us ex- 
press a hope that we have in no case exaggerated 
the unfavourable character of the inferences to be 
drawn from his pages. His creed often obliges 
him to hope the worst of men, and exert himself 


EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 301 


in proving that the worst is true; but thus far we 
are happier than he. We have no theory which 
requires us to attribute unworthy motives to Dr. 
Cumming, no opinions, religious or irreligious, 
which can make it a gratification to us to detect 
him in delinquencies. On the contrary, the better 
we are able to think of him as a man, while we 
are obliged to disapprove him as a theologian, 
the stronger will be the evidence for our convic- 
tion that the tendency towards good in human 
nature has a force which no creed can utterly coun- 
teract, and which ensures the ultimate triumph of 
that tendency over all dogmatic perversions. 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 


THERE ‘is a valuable class of books on great subjects 
which have something of the character and func- 
tions of good popular lecturing. They are not 
original, nut subtle, not of close logical texture, 
not exquisite either in thought or style; but by 
virtue of these negatives they are all the more fit 
to act on the average intelligence. They have 
enough of organizing purpose in them to make 
their facts illustrative, and to leave a distinct 
result in the mind even when most of the facts are 
forgotten ; and they have enough of vagueness and 
vacillation in their theory to win them ready 
acceptance from a mixed audience. The vagueness 
and vacillation are not devices of timidity; they 
are the honest result of the writer’s own mental 
character, which adapts him to be the instructor 
and the favourite of the “general reader,” For 
the most part, the general reader of the present 
day does not exactly know what distance he goes; 
he only knows that he does not go “ too far.” Of 
any remarkable thinker, whose writings have ex- 
cited controversy he likes to have it said that “ his 
errors are to be deplored,” leaving it not too cer- 
tain what those errors are; he is fond of what may 
be called disembodied opinions, that float in vapoury 
phrases above all systems of thought or action; he 
likes an undefined Christianity which opposes it- 
self to nothing in particular, an undefined educa- 
tion of the people, an undefined amelioration of all 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 303 


things: in fact, he likes sound views, — nothing 
extreme, but something between the excesses of 
the past and the excesses of the present. This 
modern type of the general reader may be known 
in conversation by the cordiality with which he 
assents to indistinct, blurred statements: say that 
black is black, he will shake his head and hardly 
think it; say that black is not so very black, he 
will reply, “ Exactly.” He has no hesitation, if 
you wish it, even to get up a public meeting and 
express his conviction that at times, and within 
certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency 
to be equal; but on the other hand,. he would urge 
that the spirit of geometry may be carried a little 
too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry against any 
clearly defined scepticism, but belonging to a lack 
of coherent thought, —a spongy texture of mind, 
that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one thing 
he is staunch for, is the utmost liberty of private 
haziness. 

But precisely these characteristics of the general 
reader, rendering him incapable of assimilating 
ideas unless they are administered in a highly 
diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that 
there are clever, fair-minded men, who will write 
books for him, — men very much above him in 
knowledge and ability, but not too remote from 
him in their habits of thinking, and who can thus 
prepare for him infusions of history and science 
that will leave some solidifying deposit, and save 
him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skele- 
ton. Among such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky’s 
“History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of 
Rationalism in Europe” entitles him to a high 
place. He has prepared himself for its production 


304 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


by an unusual amount of well-directed reading ; 
he has chosen his facts and quotations with much 
judgment; and he gives proofs of those important 
moral qualifications, impartiality, seriousness, and 
modesty. This praise is chiefly applicable to the 
long chapter on the History of Magic and Witch- 
craft, which opens the work, and to the two chap- 
ters on the*Antecedents and History of Persecution, 
which occur the one at the end of the first volume, 
the other at the beginning of the second. In these 
chapters Mr. Lecky has a narrower and _ better 
traced path before him than in other portions of 
his work; he is more occupied with presenting a 
particular class of facts in their historical sequence, 
and in their relation to certain grand tide-marks 
of opinion, than with disquisition ; and his writing 
is freer than elsewhere from an apparent confused- 
ness of thought, and an exuberance of approxima- 
tive phrases, which can be serviceable in no other 
way than as diluents needful for the sort of reader 
we have just described. 

The history of magic and witchcraft has been 
judiciously chosen by Mr. Lecky as the subject of 
his first section on the declining sense of the 
miraculous, because it is strikingly illustrative of 
a position, with the truth of which he is strongly 
impressed, though he does not always treat of it 
with desirable clearness and precision; namely, 
that certain beliefs become obsolete, not in conse- . 
quence of direct arguments against them, but 
because of their incongruity with prevalent habits 
of thought. Here is his statement of the two 
classes of influences by which the mass of men, in 
what is called civilized society, get their beliefs 
gradually modified : — 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 305 


“If we ask why it is that the world has rejected 
what was once so universally and so intensely believed, 
why a narrative of an old woman who had been seen 
riding on a broomstick, or who was proved to have 
transformed herself into a wolf, and to have devoured 
the flocks of her neighbours, is deemed so entirely 
incredible, most persons would probably be unable to 
give a very definite answer to the question. It is not 
because we have examined the evidence and found it 
insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it 
does not prevent, examination. It is rather because the 
idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narra- 
tives, that it is difficult even to consider them with 
gravity. Yet at one time no such improbability was 
felt, and hundreds of persons have been burnt simply 
on the two grounds I have mentioned. 

‘‘When so complete a change takes place in public 
opinion, it may be ascribed to one or other of two causes. 
It may be the result of a controversy which has con- 
clusively settled the question, establishing to the satis- 
faction of all parties a clear preponderance of argument 
or fact in favour of one opinion, and making that opin- 
ion a truism which is accepted by all enlightened men, 
even though they have not themselves examined the 
evidence on which it rests. Thus, if any one in a com- 
pany of ordinarily educated persons were to deny the 
motion of the earth or the circulation of the blood, his 
statement would be received with derision, though it is 
probable that some of his audience would be unable to 
demonstrate the first truth, and that very few of them 
could give sufficient reasons for the second. They may 
not themselves be able to defend their position; but 
they are aware that, at certain known periods of his- 
tory, controversies on those subjects took place, and 
that known writers then brought forward some defin- 
ite arguments or experiments, which were ultimately 
accepted by the whole learned world as rigid and con- 
elusive demonstrations. It 1s possible, also, for as com- 

VOL 11 — 20 


306 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


plete a change to be effected by what is called the spirit 
of the age. The general intellectual tendencies pervad- 
ing the literature of a century profoundly modify the 
character of the public mind. They form a new tone 
and habit of thought. They alter the measure of prob- 
ability. They create new attractions and new antipa- 
thies, and they eventually cause as absolute a rejection 
of certain old opinions as could be produced by the 
most cogent and definite arguments.” 


Mr. Lecky proceeds to some questionable views 
concerning the evidences of witchcraft, which 
seem to be irreconcilable even with his own re- 
marks later on; but they lead him to the state- 
ment, thoroughly made out by his historical survey, 
that “the movement was mainly silent, unargu- 
mentative, and insensible ; that men came gradually 
to disbelieve in witchcraft, because they came grad- 
ually to look upon it as absurd; and that this new 
tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those who 
were least subject to theological influences, and 
soon spread through the educated laity, and, last 
of all, took possession of the clergy.” 

We have rather painful proof that this “ second 
class of influences” with a vast number go hardly 
deeper than fashion, and that witchcraft to many 
of us is absurd only on the same ground that our 
crandfathers’ gigs are absurd. It is felt preposter- 
ous to think of spiritual agencies in connection 
with ragged beldames soaring on broomsticks, in 
an age when it is known that mediums of commu- 
nication with the invisible world are usually 
unctuous personages dressed in excellent broad- 
cloth, who soar above the curtain-poles without — 
any broomstick, and who are not given to unprofit- 
able intrigues. The enlightened imagination 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 307 


rejects the figure of a witch with her profile in dark 
relief against the moon, and her broomstick cutting 
a constellation. No undiscovered natural laws, 
no names of “ respectable ” witnesses, are invoked 
to make us feel our presumption in questioning 
the diabolic intimacies of that obsolete old woman ; 
for it is known now that the undiscovered laws, 
and the witnesses qualified by the payment of 
income tax, are all in favour of a different con- 
ception, — the image of a heavy gentleman in boots 
and black coat-tails foreshortened against the cor- 
nice. Yet no less a person than Sir Thomas 
Browne once wrote that those who denied there 
were witches, inasmuch as they thereby denied 
spirits also, were “obliquely and upon conse- 
quence a sort, not of infidels, but of atheists.” At 
present, doubtless, in certain circles unbelievers in 
heavy gentlemen who float in the air by means of 
undiscovered laws: are also taxed with atheism, 
illiberal as it is not to admit that mere weakness 
of understanding may prevent one from seeing how 
that phenomenon is necessarily involved in the 
divine origin of things. With still more remark- 
able parallelism, Sir Thomas Browne goes on: 
“ Those that, to refute their incredulity, desire to 
see apparitions, shall questionless never behold 
any, nor have the power to be so much as witches. 
The Devil hath made them already in a heresy as 
capital as witchcraft, and to appear to them were 
but to convert them.” It would be difficult to see 
what has been changed here but the mere drapery 
of circumstance, if it were not for this prominent 
difference between our days and the days of witch- 
craft, that instead of torturing, drowning, or burn- 


~-? 


ing the innocent, we give hospitality and large pay 


308 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


to the highly distinguished medium. At least we 
are safely rid of certain horrors; but if the multi- 
tude — that “ farraginous concurrence of all condi- 
tions, tempers, sexes, and ages 2 AO OURT OU 
back even to a superstition that carries cruelty in 
its train, it is not because they possess a culti- 
vated reason, but because they are pressed upon 
and held up by what we may call an external 
reason, —the sum of conditions resulting from the 
laws of material growth, from changes produced 
by great historical collisions shattering the struc- 
tures of ages and making new highways for events 
and ideas, and from the activities of higher minds 
no longer existing merely as opinions and teach- 
ings, but as institutions and organizations with 
which the interests, the affections, and the habits 
of the multitude are inextricably interwoven. No 
undiscovered laws accounting for small phenomena 
coing forward under drawing-room tables are likely 
to affect the tremendous facts of the increase of 
population, the rejection of convicts by our colo- 
nies, the exhaustion of the soil by cotton planta- 
tions, which urge even upon the foolish certain 
questions, certain claims, certain views concerning 
the scheme of the world, that can never again be 
silenced. 

If right reason is a right representation of the 
co-existences and sequences of things, here are 
co-existences and sequences that do not wait to be 
discovered, but press themselves upon us like bars 
of iron. No seances at a guinea a head for the 
sake of being pinched by “ Mary Jane” can anni- 
hilate railways, steamships, and electric telegraphs, 
which are demonstrating the interdependence of all 
human interests, and making self-interest a duct 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 309 


for sympathy. These things are part of the ex- 
ternal reason to which internal silliness has inevi- 
tably to accommodate itself. 

Three points in the history of magic and witch- 
craft are well brought out by Mr. Lecky: First, 
that the cruelties connected with it did not begin 
until men’s minds had ceased to repose implicitly 
in a sacramental system which made them feel 
well armed against evil spirits; that is, until the 
eleventh century, when there came a sort of morn- 
ing dream of doubt and heresy, bringing on the 
one side the terror of timid consciences, and on 
the other the terrorism of authority or zeal bent 
on checking the rising struggle. In that time of 
comparative mental repose, says Mr. Lecky, — 


‘‘all those conceptions of diabolical presence, all that 
predisposition towards the miraculous, which acted so 
fearfully upon the imaginations of the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries, existed; but the implicit faith, the 
boundless and triumphant credulity, with which the 
virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered 
them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a 
little less superstitious, the effects of their superstition 
would have been much more terrible. It was firmly 
believed that any one who deviated from the strict line 
of orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the power of 
Satan; but as there was no spirit of rebellion or doubt, 
this persuasion did not produce any extraordinary 
terrorism.” 


The Church was disposed to confound heretical 
opinion with sorcery; false doctrine was especially 
the Devil’s work, and it was a ready conclusion that 
a denier or innovator had held consultation with 
the father of hes. It is asaying of a zealous Catho- 
lic in the sixteenth century, quoted by Maury in 


310 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


his excellent work, “De la Magie,” — ‘“‘ Crescit cum 
magia heresis, cum heresi magia.” Even those 
who doubted were terrified at their doubts, for trust 
is more easily undermined than terror; fear 1s 
easier born than hope, lays a stronger grasp on 
man’s system than any other passion, and remains 
master of a larger group of involuntary actions. A 
chief aspect of man’s moral development is the slow 
subduing of fear by the gradual growth of intelli- 
gence, and its suppression as a motive by the 
presence of impulses less animally selfish; so that 
in relation to invisible power fear at last ceases to 
exist, save in that interfusion with higher faculties 
which we call awe. 

Secondly, Mr. Lecky shows clearly that dogmatic 
Protestantism, holding the vivid belief im Satanic 
agency to be an essential of piety, would have felt 
it shame to be a whit behind Catholicism in sever- 
ity against the Devil’s servants. Luther’s sentiments 
were, that he would not suffer a witch to live (he 
was not much more merciful to Jews) ; and, in spite 
of his fondness for children, believing a certain 
child to have been begotten by the Devil, he recom- 
mended the parents to throw it into the river. The 
torch must be turned on the worst errors of heroic 
minds, not in irreverent ingratitude, but for the 
sake of measuring our vast and various debt to all 
the influences which have concurred in the inter- 
vening ages to make us recognize as detestable 
errors the honest convictions of men who in mere 
individual capacity and moral force were very much 
above us. Again, the Scotch Puritans, during the 
comparatively short period of their ascendency, 
surpassed all Christians before them in the elaborate 
ingenuity of the tortures they applied for the dis- 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 311 


covery of witchcraft and sorcery, and did their 
utmost to prove that if Scotch Calvinism was the 
true religion, the chief “note” of the true religion 
was cruelty. It is hardly an endurable task to read 
the story of their doings; thoroughly to imagine 
them asa past reality is already a sort of torture. 
One detail is enough, and it is a comparatively mild 
one. It was the regular profession of men, called 
“prickers,” to thrust long pins into the body of a 
suspected witch in order to detect the insensible 
spot which was the infallible sign of her guilt. On 
a superficial view one would be in danger of saying 
that the main difference between the teachers who 
sanctioned these things, and the much-despised 
ancestors who offered human victims inside a huge 
wicker idol, was that they arrived at a more elabo- 
rate barbarity by a longer series of dependent pro- 
positions. We do not share Mr. Buckle’s opinion 
that a Scotch minister’s groans were a part of his 
deliberate plan for keeping the people in a state of 
terrified subjection; the ministers themselves held 
the belief they taught, and well might groan over 
it. What a blessing has a little false logic been to 
the world! Seeing that men are so slow to ques- 
tion their premises, they must have made each 
other much more miserable, if pity had not some- 
times drawn tender conclusions not warranted by 
major and minor; if there had not been people with 
an amiable imbecility of reasoning which enabled 
them at once to cling to hideous beliefs, and to be 
conscientiously inconsistent with them in their 
conduct. There is nothing lke acute deductive 
reasoning for keeping a man in the dark; it might 
be called the technique of the intellect, and the 
concentration of the mind upon it corresponds to 


212 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


that predominance of technical skill in art which 
ends in degradation of the artist’s function, unless 
new inspiration and invention come to guide it. 
And of this there is some good illustration fur- 
nished by that third node in the history of 
witcheraft, the beginning of its end, which is 
treated in an interesting manner by Mr. Lecky. 
It is worth noticing that the most important defences 
of the belief in witchcraft, against the growing scep- 
ticism in the latter part of the sixteenth century 
and in the seventeenth, were the productions of 
men who in some departments were among the 
foremost thinkers of their time. One of them was 
Jean Bodin, the famous writer on government and 
jurisprudence, whose “ Republic,” Hallam thinks, 
had an important influence in England, and fur- 
nished “a store of arguments and examples that 
were not lost on the thoughtful minds of our coun- 
trymen.” In some of his views he was original and 
bold; for example, he anticipated Montesquien in 
attempting to appreciate the relations of govern- 
ment and climate. Hallam inclines to the opinion 
that he was a Jew, and attached Divine authority 
only to the Old Testament. But this was enough 
to furnish him with his chief data for the existence 
of witches and for their capital punishment; and in 
the account of his “ Republic,” given by Hallam, 
there is enough evidence that the sagacity which 
often enabled him to make fine use of his learning 
was also often entangled in it, to temper our surprise 
at finding a writer on political science of whom it 
could be said that, along with Montesquieu, he was 
“the most philosophical of those who had read so 
deeply, the most learned of those who had thought 
so much,” in the van of the forlorn hope to main- 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 313 


tain the reality of witchcraft. It should be said 
that he was equally confident of the unreality of 
the Copernican hypothesis, on the ground that it 
was contrary to the tenets of the theologians and 
philosophers and to common-sense, and therefore 
subversive of the foundations of every science. Of 
his work on witchcraft, Mr. Lecky says: — 


“The ‘ Demonomanie des Sorciers’ is chiefly an appeal 
to authority, which the author deemed on this subject 
so unanimous and so conclusive that it was scarcely 
possible for any sane man to resist it. He appealed to 
the popular belief in all countries, in all ages, and in 
all religions. He cited the opinions of an immense 
multitude of the greatest writers of pagan antiquity, 
and of the most illustrious of the fathers. He showed 
how the laws of all nations recognized the existence of 
witchcraft; and he collected hundreds of cases which 
had been investigated before the tribunals of his own 
or of other countries. He relates with the most 
minute and circumstantial detail, and with the most 
unfaltering confidence, all the proceedings at the 
witches’ Sabbath, the methods which the witches em- 
ployed in transporting themselves through the air, 
their transformations, their carnal intercourse with the 
Devil, their various means of injuring their enemies, 
the signs that led to their detection, their confessions 
when condemned, and their demeanour at the stake.”’ 


Something must be allowed for a lawyer’s affec- 
tion towards a belief which had furnished so many 
“cases.” Bodin’s work had been prompted by the 
treatise, “ De Prestigiis Demonum,” written by John 
Wier, a German physician, —a treatise which is 
worth notice as an example of a transitional form of 
opinion for which many analogies may be found in 
the history of both religion and science. Wier 


314 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


believed in demons, and in possession by demons ; 
but his practice as a physician had convinced him 
that the so-called witches were patients and victims, 
that the Devil took advantage of their diseased 
condition to delude them, and that there was no 
consent of an evil will on the part of the women. 
He argued that the word in Leviticus translated 
“witch” meant “ poisoner,” and besought the princes 
of Europe to hinder the further spilling of innocent 
blood. These heresies of Wier threw Bodin into 
such a state of amazed indignation that if he had 
been an ancient Jew, instead of a modern economi- 
cal one, he would have rent his garments. “ No 
one had ever heard of pardon being accorded to 
sorcerers ;” and probably the reason why Charles IX. 
died young was because he had pardoned the 
sorcerer, Trois Echelles! We must remember that 
this was in 1581, when the great scientific move- 
ment of the Renaissance had hardly begun, when 
Galileo was a youth of seventeen, and Kepler a boy 
of ten. 

But directly afterwards, on the other side, came 
Montaigne, whose sceptical acuteness could arrive 
at negatives without any apparatus of method. A 
certain keen narrowness of nature will secure a man 
from many absurd beliefs which the larger soul, 
vibrating to more manifold influences, would have a 
long struggle to part with. And so we find the 
charming, chatty Montaigne, in one of the brightest 
of his essays, “ Des Boiteux,’ where he declares 
that, from his own observation of witches and sor- 
cerers, he should have recommended them to be 
treated with curative hellebore, stating in his own 
way a pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely. 
It seems to him much less of a prodigy that men 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. B15 


should lie, or that their imaginations should deceive 
them, than that a human body should be carried 
through the air on a broomstick or up a chimney 
by some unknown spirit. He thinks it a sad busi- 
ness to persuade one’s self that the test of truth lies 
in the multitude of believers: “ En une presse ou les 
fols surpassent de tant les sages en nombre.” Ordi- 
narily he has observed, when men have something 
stated to them as a fact, they are more ready to ex- 
plain it than to inquire whether it is real: “ Ils pas- 
sent par-dessus les propositions, mais ils examinent 
les consequences; ws laissent les choses, et cowrent 
awx causes.” ‘There is a sort of strong and generous 
ignorance which is as honourable and courageous as 
science : “Ionorance pour laquelle concevoir il n’y a 
pas moins de science qu’a concevoir la science.” 
And apropos of the immense traditional evidence 
which weighed with such men as Bodin, he says: 
“As for the proofs and arguments founded on 
experience and facts, 1 do not pretend to unravel 
these. What end of a thread is there to lay hold 
of? I often cut them, as Alexander did his 
knot. Apres tout, cest mettre ses conjectures a 
bien haut prix, queden faire cwire un homme tout 
POR 

Writing lke this, when it finds eager readers, is 
a sign that the weather is changing; yet much 
later, namely, after 1665, when the Royal Society 
had been founded, our own Glanvil, the author of 
the “Scepsis Scientifica,’?—a work that was a 
remarkable advance towards a true definition of the 
limits of inquiry, and that won him his election 
as fellow of the Society, — published an energetic 
vindication of the belief in witchcraft, of which 
Mr. Lecky gives the following sketch : — 


316 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


“¢The ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus,’ which is proba- 
bly the ablest book ever published in defence of the 
superstition, opens with a striking picture of the rapid 
progress of the scepticism in England. Everywhere 
a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in 
the upper classes ; but it was a disbelief that arose 
entirely from a strong sense of its antecedent improba- 
bility. All who were opposed to the Orthodox faith 
united in discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at 
it as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque 
and ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible 
that it would be a waste of time to examine it. This 
spirit had arisen since the Restoration, although the 
laws were still in force, and although little or no direct 
reasoning had been brought to bear upon the subject. 
In order to combat it, Glanvil proceeded to examine 
the general question of the credibility of the miracu- 
lous. He saw that the reason why witchcraft was 
ridiculed was because it was a phase of the miraculous, 
and the work of the Devil ; that the scepticism was 
chiefly due to those who disbelieved in miracles and 
the Devil; and that the instances of witchcraft or pos- 
session in the Bible were invariably placed on a level 
with those that were tried in the courts of England. 
That the evidence of the belief was overwhelming, he 
firmly believed; and this, indeed, was scarcely dis- 
puted; but, until the sense of @ priort improbability 
was remoyed, no possible accumulation of facts would 
cause men to believe it. To that task he accord- 
ingly addressed himself. Anticipating the idea and 
almost the words of modern controversialists, he urged 
that there was such a thing as a credulity of unbelief; 
and that those who believed so strange a concurrence 
of delusions as was necessary on the supposition of the 
unreality of witchcraft, were far more credulous than 
those who accepted the belief. He made his very 
scepticism his principal weapon; and analyzing with 
much acuteness the a priori objections, he showed that 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. ang 


they rested upon an unwarrantable confidence in our 
knowledge of the laws of the spirit world, that they 
implied the existence of some strict analogy between 
the faculties of men and of spirits, and that, as such 
analogy most probably did not exist, no reasoning 
based on the supposition could dispense men from 
examining the evidence. He concluded with a large 
collection of cases, the evidence of which was, as he 
thought, incontestable.” 


We have quoted this sketch because Glanvil’s 
argument against the a prior objection of absur- 
dity is fatiguingly urged in relation to other alleged 
marvels which to busy people, seriously occupied 
with the difficulties of affairs, of science, or of art, 
seem as little worthy of examination as aeronautic 
broomsticks ; and also because we here see Glanvil, 
in combating an incredulity that does not. happen 
to be his own, wielding that very argument of 
traditional evidence which he had made the subject 
of vigorous attack in his “Scepsis Scientifica.” But 
perhaps large minds have been peculiarly liable to 
this fluctuation concerning the sphere of tradition, 
because, while they have attacked its misapplica- 
tions, they have been the more solicited by the 
vague sense that tradition is really the basis of our 
best life. Our sentiments may be called organized 
traditions; and a large part of our actions gather 
all their justification, all their attraction and aroma, 
from the memory of the life lived, of the actions 
done, before we were born. In the absence of any 
profound research into psychological functions or 
into the mysteries of inheritance, in the absence of 
any profound comprehensive view of man’s histori- 
cal development and the dependence of one age on 
another, a mind at all rich in sensibilities must always 


318 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


have had an indefinite uneasiness in an undistinguish- 
ing attack on the coercive influence of tradition. 
And this may be the apology for the apparent incon- 
sistency of Glanvil’s acute criticism on the one side, 
and his indignation at the “looser gentry,” who 
laughed at the evidences for witchcraft on the other. 
We have already taken up too much space with this 
subject of witchcraft, else we should be tempted to 
dwell on Sir Thomas Browne, who far surpassed 
Glanvil in magnificent incongruity of opinion, and 
whose works are the most remarkable combination 
existing, of witty sarcasm against ancient nonsense 
and modern obsequiousness, with indications of a 
capacious credulity. After all, we may be sharing 
what seems to us the hardness of these men, who 
sat in their studies and argued at their ease about 
a belief that would be reckoned to have caused 
more misery and bloodshed than any other super- 
stition, if there had been no such thing as persecu- 
tion on the ground of religious opinion. 

On this subject of persecution, Mr. Lecky writes 
his best; with clearness of conception, with calm 
justice, bent on appreciating the necessary tendency 
of ideas, and with an appropriateness of illustration 
that could be supplied only by extensive and intel- 
ligent reading. Persecution, he shows, is not in any 
sense peculiar to the Catholic church; it is a direct 
sequence of the doctrines that salvation is to be 
had only within the Church, and that erroneous 
belief is damnatory,— doctrines held as fully by 
Protestant sects as by the Catholics; and in pro- 
portion to its power, Protestantism has been as per- 
secuting as Catholicism. He maintains, in opposition 
to the favourite modern notion of persecution defeat- 
ing its own object, that the Church, holding the dogma 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 319 


of exclusive salvation, was perfectly consequent, and 
really achieved its end of spreading one belief and 
quenching another, by calling in the aid of the civil 
arm. Who will say that governments, by their 
power over institutions and patronage, as well as 
over punishment, have not power over the interests 
and inclinations of men, and over most of those 
external conditions into which subjects are born, 
and which make them adopt the prevalent belief 
as a second nature? Hence, to a sincere believer 
in the doctrine of exclusive salvation, governments 
had it in their power to save men from perdition ; 
and wherever the clergy were at the elbow of the 
civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic 
or Protestant, persecution was the result. “Compel 
them to come in,’ was a rule that seemed sanctioned 
by mercy; and the horrible sufferings it led men to 
inflict seemed small to minds accustomed to con- 
template, as a perpetual source of motive, the 
eternal, unmitigated miseries of a hell that was 
the inevitable destination of a majority amongst 
mankind. 

It is a significant fact, noted by Mr. Lecky, that 
the only two leaders of the Reformation who advo- 
cated tolerance were Zuinglius and Socinus, both 
of them disbelievers in exclusive salvation. And 
in corroboration of other evidence that the chief 
triumphs of the Reformation were due to coercion, 
he commends to the special attention of his readers 
the following quotation from a work attributed 
without question to the famous Protestant the- 
ologian, Jurieu, who had himself been hindered, 
as a Protestant, from exercising his professional 
functions in France, and was settled as pastor 
at Rotterdam. It should be remembered that 


320 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


Juriew’s labours fell in the latter part of the seven- 
teenth century and in the beginning of the eigh- 
teenth, and that he was the contemporary of Bayle, 
with whom he was in bitter controversial hos- 
tility. He wrote, then, at a time when there 
was warm debate on the question of toleration ; 
and it was his great object to vindicate himself 
and his French fellow-Protestants from all laxity 
on this point: — 


“ Peut on nier que le paganisme est tombé dans le 
monde par l’autorité des empereurs romains? On peut 
assurer sans témérité que le paganisme seroit encore 
debout, et que les trois quarts de 1]’Europe seroient 
encore payens si Constantin et ses successeurs n’avaient 
employé leur autorité pour l’abolir. Mais, je vous prie, 
de quelles voies Dieu s’est il servi dans ces derniers sie- 
cles pour rétablir la véritable religion dans l’occident? 
Les rois de Suede, ceux de Danemarck, ceux d’ Angle- 
terre, les magistrats souverains de Suisse, des Puis Bas, 
des villes libres d’ Allemagne, les princes électeurs, et 
autres princes souverains de UVempire, n’ont ils pas 
emploie leur autorité pour abbattre le papisme?” 


Indeed, wherever the tremendous alternative of 
everlasting torments is believed in, — believed in 
so that it becomes a motive determining the life, 
—not only persecution, but every other form of 
severity and gloom, is the legitimate consequence. 
There is much ready declamation in these days 
against the spirit of asceticism and against zeal for 
doctrinal conversion; but surely the macerated 
form of a St. FYancis, the fierce denunciations of a 
St. Dominic, the groans and prayerful wrestlings 
of the Puritan who seasoned his bread with tears, 
and made all pleasurable sensation sin, are more 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 321 


in keeping with the contemplation of unmending 
anguish as the destiny of a vast multitude whose 
nature we share, than the rubicund cheerfulness 
of some modern divines, who profess to unite a 
smiling liberalism with a well-bred and tacit but 
unshaken confidence in the reality of the bottomless 
pit. But, in fact, as Mr. Lecky maintains, that 
awful image, with its group of associated dogmas 
concerning the inherited curse, and the damnation 
of unbaptized infants, of heathens, and of heretics, 
has passed away from what he is fond of calling 
* the realizations ” of Christendom. These things 
are no longer the objects of practical belief. They 
may be mourned for in encyclical letters; bishops 
Iuay regret them; doctors of divinity may sign 
testimonials to the excellent character of these 
decayed beliefs; but for the mass of Christians 
they are no more influential than unrepealed but 
forgotten statutes. And with these dogmas has 
melted away the strong basis for the defence of 
persecution. No man now writes eager vindica- 
tions of himself and his colleagues from the suspi- 
cion of adhering to the principle of toleration. 
And this momentous change, it is Mr. Lecky’s 
object to show, is due to that concurrence of con- 
ditions which he has chosen to call “ the advance 
of the spirit of rationalism.” 

In other parts of his work, where he attempts to 
trace the action of the same conditions on the 
acceptance of miracles and on other chief phases of 
our historical development, Mr. Lecky has laid 
himself open to considerable criticism. The chap- 
ters on the miracles of the Church, the esthetic, 
scientific, and moral development of rationalism, 


the secularization of politics, and the industrial 
VOL. 11. — 21 


322 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


history of rationalism, embrace a wide range of 
diligently gathered facts; but they are nowhere 
illuminated by a sufficiently clear conception and 
statement of the agencies at work, or the mode 
of their action, in the gradual modification of 
opinion and of life. The writer frequently im- 
presses us as being in a state of hesitation concern- 
ing his own standing-point, which may form a 
desirable stage in private meditation but not in 
published exposition. Certain epochs in theoretic 
conception, certain considerations, which should 
be fundamental to his survey, are introduced quite 
incidentally in a sentence or two, or in a note 
which seems to be an afterthought. Great writers 
and their ideas are touched upon too slightly and 
with too little discrimination, and important theo- 
ries are sometimes characterized with a rashness 
which conscientious revision will correct. There 
is a fatiguing use of vague or shifting phrases, 
such as “ Modern Civilization,” “Spirit of the 
Age,” “ Tone of Thought, ” “ Intellectual Type of the 
Age,” “ Bias of the Imagination,” “ Habits of Reli- 
gious Thought,” unbalanced by any precise defini- 
tion; and the spirit of rationalism is sometimes 
treated of as if it lay outside the specific mental 
activities of which it is a generalized expression. 
Mr. Curdle’s famous definition of the dramatic 
unities as “a sort of a general oneness,” is not 
totally false; but such luminousness as it has 
could only be perceived by those who already 
knew what the unities were. Mr. Lecky has the 
advantage of being strongly impressed with the 
ereat part played by the emotions in the formation 
of opinion, and with the high complexity of the 
causes at work in social evolution; but he fre- 


THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. B23 


quently writes as if he had never yet distinguished 
between the complexity of the conditions that 
produce prevalent states of mind, and the inability 
of particular minds to give distinct reasons for the 
preferences or persuasions produced by those states. 
In brief, he does not discriminate, or does not help 
his reader to discriminate, between objective com- 
plexity and subjective confusion. But the most 
muddle-headed gentleman who represents the spirit 
of the age by observing, as he settles his collar, 
that the development theory is quite “ the thing,” 
is a result of definite processes, if we could only 
trace them. “Mental attitudes” and “ predispo- 
sitions,” however vague in consciousness, have not 
vague causes, any more than the “ blind motions 
of the spring” in plants and animals. 

The word “rationalism” has the misfortune, 
shared by most words in this gray world, of being 
somewhat equivocal. This evil may be nearly 
overcome by careful preliminary definition; but 
Mr. Lecky does not supply this, and the original 
specific application of the word to a particular 
phase of Biblical interpretation seems to have clung 
about his use of it with a misleading effect. 
Through some parts of his book he appears to re- 
gard the grand characteristics of modern thought 
and civilization, compared with ancient, as a 
radiation in the first instance from a change in 
religious conceptions. The supremely important 
fact that the gradual reduction of all phenomena 
within the sphere of established law, which carries 
as a consequence the rejection of the miraculous, 
has its determining current in the development of 
physical science, seems to have engaged compara- 
tively little of his attention; at least, he gives it 


324 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


no prominence. The great conception of universal 
regular sequence, without partiality and without 
caprice, — the conception which is the most potent 
force at work in the modification of our faith, and 
of the practical form given to our sentiments, — 
could only grow out of that patient watching of 
external fact and that silencing of preconceived 
notions which are urged upon the mind by the 
problems of physical science. 

There is not room here to explain and justify 
the impressions of dissatisfaction which have been 
briefly indicated; but a serious writer like Mr. 
Lecky will not find such suggestions altogether 
useless. The objections, even the misunderstand- 
ings, of a reader who is not careless or ill-disposed, 
may serve to stimulate an author’s vigilance over 
his thoughts as well as his style. It would be 
eratifying to see some future proof that Mr. Lecky 
has acquired juster views than are implied in the 
assertion that philosophers of the sensational school 
“can never rise to the conception of the disinter- 
ested ;” and that he has freed himself from all temp- 
tation to that mingled laxity of statement and 
ill-pitched elevation of tone which are painfully 
present in the closing pages of his second volume. 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX 
HOLT. 


FELLOW-WORKMEN: J am not going to take up your 
time by complimenting you. It has been the fash- 
ion to compliment kings and other authorities 
when they have come into power, and to tell them 
that, under their wise and beneficent rule, happi- 
ness would certainly overtlow the land. But the 
end has not always corresponded to that beginning. 
If it were true that we who work for wages had 
more of the wisdom and virtue necessary to the 
right use of power than has been shown by the 
aristocratic and mercantile classes, we should not 
glory much in that fact, or consider that it carried 
with it any near approach to infallibility. 

In my opinion there has been too much com- 
plimenting of that sort; and whenever a speaker, 
whether he is one of ourselves or not, wastes our 
time in boasting or flattery, I say, let us hiss him. 
If we have the beginning of wisdom, which is, to 
know a little truth about ourselves, we know that 
as a body we are neither very wise nor very virtu- 
ous. And to prove this, I will not point specially 
to our own habits and doings, but to the general 
state of the country. Any nation that had within 
it a majority of men —and we are the majority. — 
pessessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not 
tolerate the bad practices, the commercial lying 
and swindling, the poisonous adulteration of goods, 


326 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


the retail cheating, and the political bribery which 
are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A major- 
ity has the power of creating a public opinion. 
We could groan and hiss before we had the fran- 
chise: if we had groaned and hissed in the right 
place, if we had discerned better between good and 
evil, if the multitude of us artisans, and factory 
hands, and miners, and laborers of all sorts, had 
been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, 
sober, —and I don’t see how there can be wisdom 
and virtue anywhere without these qualities, — we 
should have made an audience that would have 
shamed the other classes out of their share in the 
national vices. We should have had better mem- 
bers of Parliament, better religious teachers, hon- 
ester tradesmen, fewer. foolish demagogues, less 
impudence in infamous and brutal men; and we 
should not have had among us the abomination of 
men calling themselves religious while living in 
splendour on ill-gotten gains. I say, it is not 
possible for any society in which there is a very 
large body of wise and virtuous men to be as 
vicious as our society is, — to have as low a stand- 
ard of right and wrong, to have so much belief in 
falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a 
notion of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises 
a man above his fellows. Therefore let us have 
done with this nonsense about our being much 
better than the rest of our countrymen, or the 
pretence that that was a reason why we ought to 
have such an extension of the franchise as has 
been given to us. The reason for our having the 
franchise, as I want presently to show, les some- 
where else than in our personal good qualities, and 
does not in the least lie in any high betting chance 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 327 


that a delegate is a better man than a duke, or 
that a Sheffield grinder is a better man than any 
one of the firm he works for. 

However, we have got our franchise now. We 
have been sarcastically called in the House of 
Commons the future masters of the country; and 
if that sarcasm contains any truth, it seems to me 
that the first thing we had better think of is, our 
heavy responsibility, —that is to say, the terrible 
risk we run of working mischief and missing good, 
as others have done before us. Suppose certain 
men, discontented with the irrigation of a country 
which depended for all its prosperity on the right 
direction being given to the waters of a great river, 
had got the management of the irrigation before 
they were quite sure how exactly it could be 
altered for the better, or whether they could com- 
mand the necessary agency for such an alteration. 
Those men would have a difficult and dangerous 
business on their hands; and the more sense, feel- 
ing, and knowledge they had, the more they would 
be likely to tremble rather than to triumph. Our 
situation is not altogether unlike theirs. For 
general prosperity and well-being is a vast crop, 
that like the corn in Egypt can be come at, not at 
all by hurried snatching, but only by a well- 
judged patient process; and whether our political 
power will be any guod to us now we have got it, 
must depend entirely on the means and materials, 
—the knowledge, ability, and honesty we have at 
command. These three things are the only con- 
ditions on which we can get any lasting benefit, as 
every clever workman among us knows: he knows 
that for an article to be worth much there must be 
a good invention or plan to go upon, there must 


328 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


be a well-prepared material, and there must be 
skilful and honest work in carrying out the plan. 
And by this test we may try those who want to be 
our leaders. Have they anything to offer us be- 
sides indignant talk? When they tell us we ought 
to have this, that, or the other thing, can they 
explain to us any reasonable, fair, safe way of 
getting it? Can they argue in favour of a particu- 
lar change by showing us pretty closely how the 
change is likely to work? I don’t want to decry a 
just indignation; on the contrary, I should like it 
to be more thorough and general. A wise man, 
more than two thousand years ago, when he was 
asked what would most tend to lessen injustice in 
the world, said, “ If every bystander felt as indig- 
nant at a wrong as if he himself were the sufferer. ” 
Let us cherish such indignation. But the long- 
growing evils of a great nation are a tangled busi- 
ness, asking for a good deal more than indignation 
in order to be got rid of. Indignation is a fine 
war-horse, but the war-horse must be ridden by a 
man: it must be ridden by rationality, skill, cour- 
age, armed with the right weapons, and taking 
definite aim. 

We have reason to be discontented with many 
things, and, looking back either through the his- 
tory of England to much earlier generations or to 
the legislation and administrations of later times, 
we are justified in saying that many of the evils 
under which our country now suffers are the con- 
sequences of folly, ignorance, neglect, or self- 
seeking in those who, at different times, have 
wielded the powers of rank, office, and money. 
But the more bitterly we feel this, the more loudly 
we utter it, the stronger is the obligation we lay 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 329 


on ourselves to beware, lest we also, by a too hasty 
wresting of measures which seem to promise an 
immediate partial relief, make a worse time of it 
for our own generation, and leave a bad inheritance 
to our children. The deepest curse of wrong-doing, 
whether of the foolish or wicked sort, is that its 
effects are difficult to be undone. I suppose there 
is hardly anything more to be shuddered at than 
that part of the history of disease which shows 
how, when a man injures his constitution by a life 
of vicious excess, his children and grandchildren 
inherit diseased bodies and minds, and how the 
effects of that unhappy inheritance continue to 
spread beyond our calculation. This is only one 
example of the law by which human lives are 
linked together; another example of what we com- 
plain of when we point to our pauperism, to the 
brutal ignorance of multitudes among our fellow- 
countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on us 
by blamable wars, to the wasteful channels made 
for the public money, to the expense and trouble 
of getting justice, and call these the effects of bad 
rule. This is the law that we all bear the yoke 
of, —the law of no man’s making, and which no 
man can undo. Everybody now sees an example 
of it in the case of Ireland. We who are living 
now are sufferers by the wrong-doing of those who 
lived before us; we are the sufferers by each 
other’s wrong-doing; and the children who come 
after us are and will be sufferers from the same 
causes. Will any man say he doesn’t care for 
that law —it is nothing to him — what he wants 
is to better himself? With what face then will 
he complain of any injury? Jf he says that in 
politics or in any sort of social action he will not 


339 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


care to know what are likely to be the conse- 
quences to others besides himself, he is defending 
the very worst doings that have brought about his 
discontent. He might as well say that there is 
no better rule needful for men than that each 
should tug and drive for what will please him, 
without caring how that tugging will act on the 
fine wide-spread network of society in which he is 
fast meshed. If any man taught that as a doc- 
trine, we should know him for a fool. But there 
are men who act upon it; every scoundrel, for 
example, whether he is a rich religious scoundrel 
who lies and cheats on a large scale, and will per- 
haps come and ask you to send him to Parliament, 
or a poor pocket-picking scoundrel, who will steal 
your loose pence while you are listening round the 
platform. None of us are so ignorant as not to 
know that a society, a nation, is held together by 
just the opposite doctrine and action, — by the 
dependence of men on each other and the sense 
they have of a common interest in preventing in- 
jury. And we working-men are, I think, of all 
classes the last that can afford to forget this; for 
if we did we should be much like sailors cutting 
away the timbers of our own ship to warm our 
erog with. For what else is the meaning of our 
trades-unions? What else is the meaning of every 
flag we carry, every procession we make, every 
crowd we collect for the sake of making some pro- 
test on behalf of our body as receivers of wages, 
if not this: that it is our interest to stand by each 
other, and that this being the common interest, no 
one of us will try to make a good bargain for him- 
self without considering what will be good for his 
fellows? And every member of a union believes 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 331 


that the wider he can spread his union, the 
stronger and surer will be the effect of it Sol 
think I shall be borne out in saying that a work- 
ing-man who can put two and two together, or 
take three from four and see what will be the re- 
mainder, can understand that a society, to be well 
off, must be made up chiefly of men who consider 
the general good as well as their own. 

Well, but taking the world as it is—and this 
is one way we must take it when we want to find 
out how it can be improved —no society is made 
up of a single class: society stands before us ke 
that wonderful piece of life, the human body, 
with all its various parts depending on one another, 
and with a terrible liability to get wrong because 
of that delicate dependence. We all know how 
many diseases the human body is apt to suffer 
from, and how difficult it is even for the doctors 
to find out exactly where the seat or beginning of 
the disorder is. That is because the body is made 
up of so many various parts, all related to each 
other, or likely all to feel the effect if any one of 
them goes wrong. It is somewhat the same with 
our old nations or societies. No society ever stood 
long in the world without getting to be composed 
of different classes. Now, it is all pretence to 
say that there is no such thing as class interest. 
It is clear that if any particular number of men 
get a particular benefit from any existing institu- 
tion, they are likely to band together, in order to 
keep up that benefit and increase it, until it is 
perceived to be unfair and injurious to another 
large number, who get knowledge and strength 
enough to set up a resistance. And this, again, 
has been part of the history of every great society 


332 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


since history began. But the simple reason for 
this being, that any large body of men is likely to 
have more of stupidity, narrowness, and greed 
than of far-sightedness and generosity, it is plain 
that the number who resist unfairness and injury 
are in danger of becoming injurious in their turn. 
And in this way a justifiable resistance has become 
a damaging convulsion, making everything worse 
instead of better. This has been seen so often that 
we ought to profit a little by the experience. So 
long as there is selfishness in men; so long as they 
have not found out for themselves institutions 
which express and carry into practice the truth, 
that the highest interest of mankind must at last 
be a common and not a divided interest; so long 
as the gradual operation of steady causes has not 
made that truth a part of every man’s knowledge 
and feeling, just as we now not only know that it 
is good for our health to be cleanly, but feel that 
cleanliness is only another word for cemfort, which 
is the under side or lining of all pleasure, —— so 
long, I say, as men wink at their own knowing- 
ness, or hold their heads high because they have 
vot an advantage over their fellows, so long class 
interest will be in danger of making itself felt 
injuriously. No set of men will get any sort of 
power without being in danger of wanting more 
thau their right share. But, on the other hand, 
it is just as certain that no set oi men will get 
anery at having less than their right share, and 
set up a claim on that ground, without falling into 
just the same danger of exacting too much, and 
exacting it In wrong ways. It’s human nature 
we have got to work with all round, and nothing 
else. That seems like saying something very 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 333 


commonplace, —nay, obvious; as if one should 
say that where there are hands there are mouths, 
Yet, to hear a good deal of the speechifying and to 
see a good deal of the action that go forward, one 
might suppose it was forgotten. 

But I come back to this: that, in our old so- 
ciety, there are old institutions, and among them 
the various distinctions and inherited advantages 
of classes, which have shaped themselves along 
with all the wonderful, slow-growing system of 
things made up of our laws, our commerce, and 
our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, 
such as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, 
such as scientific thought and professional skill. 
Just as in that case I spoke of before, the irriga- 
tion of a country, which must absolutely have its 
water distributed or it will bear no crop; there are 
the old channels, the old banks, and the old pumps, 
which must be used as they are until new and 
better have been prepared, or the structure of the 
old has been gradually altered. But it would be 
fool’s work to batter down a pump only because a 
better might be made, when you had no machin- 
ery ready for a new one: it would be wicked work, 
if villages lost their crops by it. Now the only 
safe way by which society can be steadily improved 
and our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt 
to do away directly with the actually existing 
class distinctions and advantages, as if every- 
body could have the same sort of work, or lead 
the same sort of life (which none of my hearers 
are stupid enough to suppose), but by the turning 
of class interests into class functions or duties. 
What I mean is, that each class should be urged 
by the surrounding conditions to perform its par- 


334 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


ticular work under the strong pressure of responsi- 
bility to the nation at large; that our public affairs 
should be got into a state in which there should 
be no impunity for foolish or faithless conduct. 
In this way the public judgment would sift out 
incapability and dishonesty from posts of high 
charge, and even personal ambition would necessa- 
rily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of 
the most selfish men must be a good deal shaped 
by the opinions of those around them; and for one 
person to put on a cap and bells, or to go about 
dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he 
may spend a vast sum of money in having more 
finery than his neighbours, he must be pretty sure 
of a crowd who will applaud him. Now, changes 
can only be good in proportion as they help to 
bring about this sort of result; in proportion as 
they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and 
fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the 
course of that substitution class distinctions must 
inevitably change their character, and represent 
the varying duties of men, not their varying in- 
terests. But this end will not come by impa- 
tience. “ Day will not break the sooner because 
we get up before the twilight.” Still less will 
it come by mere undoing, or change merely as 
change. And moreover, if we believed that it 
would be unconditionally hastened by our getting 
the franchise, we should be what I call supersti- 
tious men, believing in magic, or the production 
of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the fran- 
chise will greatly hasten that good end in propor- 
tion only as every one of us has the knowledge, 
the foresight, the conscience, that will make him 
well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 335 


nature of things in this world has been deterrnined 
for us beforehand, and in such a way that no ship 
can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage, 
and reach the right port, unless it is well manned: 
the nature of the winds and the waves, of the 
timbers, the sails, and the cordage, will not ac- 
commodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors. 
You will not suspect me of wanting to preach 
any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence that 
everything is in a fine way, and need not be made 
better. What I am striving to keep in our minds 
is the care, the precaution, with which we should 
go about making things better, so that the public 
order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock 
may be given to this society of ours, this living 
body in which our lives are bound up. After the 
Reform Bill of 1832 I was in an election riot, 
which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what 
public disorder must always be; and I have never 
forgotten that the riot was brought about chiefly 
by the agency of dishonest men who professed to 
be on the people’s side. Now, the danger hanging 
over change is great, just in proportion as it tends 
to produce such disorder by giving any large num- 
ber of ignorant men, whose notions of what is 
good are of a low and brutal sort, the belief that 
they have got power into their hands, and may do 
‘pretty much as they like. If any one can look 
round us and say that he sees no signs of any such 
danger now, and that our national condition is 
running along like a clear broadening stream, safe 
not to get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful 
man. Perhaps he does his own gardening, and 
seldom takes exercise far away from home. To 
us who have no gardens, and often walk abroad, it 


336 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT 


is plain that we can never get into a bit of a crowd 
but we must rub clothes with a set of roughs, who 
have the worst vices of the worst rich, — who are 
gamblers, sots, libertines, knaves, or else mere 
sensual simpletons and victims. They are the 
ulgy crop that has sprung up while the stewards 
have been sleeping; they are the multiplying brood 
begotten by parents who have been left without 
all teaching save that of a too craving body, with- 
out all well-being save the fading delusions of 
drugged beer and gin. They are the hideous mar- 
gin of society, at one edge drawing toward it the 
updesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening 
imperceptibly into the lowest criminal class. 
Here is one of the evils which cannot be got rid of 
quickly, and against which any of us who have got 
sense, decency, and instruction have need to watch. 
That these degraded fellow-men could really get 
the mastery in a persistent disobedience to the 
laws and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not 
believe; but wretched calamities must come from 
the very beginning of such a struggle, and the 
continuance of it would be a civil war, 1n which 
the inspiration on both sides might soon cease to 
be even a false notion of good, and might become 
the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have 
all to see to it that we do not help to rouse what 
I may call the savage beast in the breasts of our 
generation, — that we do not help to poison the 
nation’s blood, and make richer provision for bes- 
tiality tocome. We know well enough that oppres- 
sors have sinned in this way, — that oppression 
has notoriously made men mad; and we are deter- 
mined to resist oppression. But let us, if possible, 
show that we can keep sane in our resistance, and 


a 


=o 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 337 


shape our means more and more reasonably toward 
the least harmful, and therefore the speediest, 
attainment of our end. Let us, I say, show that 
our spirits are too strong to be driven mad, but can 
keep that sober determination which alone gives 
mastery over the adaptation of means. And a 
first guarantee of this sanity will be to act as if we 
understood that the fundamental duty of a govern- 
ment is to preserve order, to enforce obedience of 
the laws. It has been held hitherto that a man 
can be depended on as a guardian of order only 
when he has much money and comfort to lose. 
But a better state of things would be, that men 
who had little money and not much comfort should 
still be guardians of order, because they had sense 
to see that disorder would do no good, and had a 
heart of justice, pity, and fortitude, to keep them 
from making more misery only because they felt 
some misery themselves. There are thousands of 
artisans who have already shown this fine spirit, 
and have endured much with patient heroism. If 
such a spirit spread, and penetrated us all, we 
should soon become the masters of the country in 
the best sense and to the best ends. For, the 
public order being preserved, there can be no gov- 
ernment in future that will not be determined by 
our insistence on our fair and practicable demands. 
It is only by disorder that our demands will be 
choked, that we shall find ourselves lost among a 
brutal rabble, with all the intelligence of the 
country opposed to us, and see government in the 
shape of guns that will sweep us down in the igno- 
ble martyrdom of fools. 

It has been a too common notion that to insist 


much on the preservation of order is the part of a 
VOL. 11, — 22 


338 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


selfish aristocracy and a selfish commercial class, 
because among these, in the nature of things, have 
been found the opponents of change. I am a Radi- 
cal; and what is more, I am nota Radical with a 
title, or a French cook, or even an entrance into 
fine society. I expect great changes, and I desire 
them. But I don’t expect them to come in a 
hurry, by mere inconsiderate sweeping. A Her- 
cules with a big besom is a fine thing for a filtby 
stable, but not for weeding a seed-bed, where his 
besom would soon make a barren floor. 

That is old-fashioned talk, some one may Say. 
We know all that. 

Yes, when things are put in an extreme way, 
most people think they know them; but, after all, 
they are comparatively few who see the small de- 
grees by which those extremes are arrived at, or 
have the resolution and self-control to resist the 
little impulses by which they creep on surely to- 
ward a fatal end. Does anybody set out meaning 
to ruin himself, or to drink himself to death, or 
to waste his life so that he becomes a despicable 
old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in 
winter. Yet there are plenty, of whose lot this 
is the pitiable story. Well now, supposing us 
all to have the best intentions, we working-men, 
as a body, run some risk of bringing evil on the 
nation in that unconscious manner — half hurry- 
ing, half pushed in a jostling march toward an end 
we are not thinking of. For just as there are 
many things which we know better and feel much 
more strongly than the richer, softer-handed classes 
can know or feel them; so there are many things 
— many precious benefits — which we, by the very 
fact of our privations, our lack of leisure and in- 





ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 339 


struction, are not so likely to be aware of and take 
into our account. Those precious benefits form a 
chief part of what I may call the common estate of 
society: a wealth over and above buildings, ma- 
~chinery, produce, shipping, and so on, though 
closely connected with these; a wealth of a more 
delicate kind, that we may more unconsciously 
bring into danger, doing harm and not knowing 
that we do it. I mean that treasure of knowledge, 
science, poetry, refinement of thought, feeling, 
and manners, great memories and the interpreta- 
tion of great records, which is carried on from the 
minds of one generation to the minds of another. 
This is something distinct from the indulgences of 
luxury and the pursuit of vain finery; and one of 
the hardships in the lot of working-men is that 
they have been for the most part shut out from 
sharing in this treasure. It can make a man’s life 
very great, very full of delight, though he has no 
smart furniture and no horses: it also yields a 
ereat deal of discovery that corrects error, and of 
invention that lessens bodily pain, and must at 
least make life easier for all. 

Now the security of this treasure demands, not 
only the preservation of order, but a certain pa- 
tience on our part with many institutions and 
facts of various kinds, especially touching the 
accumulation of wealth, which from the lght we 
stand in, we are more likely to discern the evil 
than the good of. It is constantly the task of 
practical wisdom not to say, “ This is good, and I 
will have it,” but to say, “ This is the less of two 
unavoidable evils, and I will bear it.” And this 
treasure of knowledge, which consists in the fine 
activity, the exalted vision of many minds, is 


340 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


bound up at present with conditions which have 
much evil in them.- Just as in the case of mate- 
rial wealth and its distribution we are obliged to 
take the selfishness and weaknesses of human nature 
into account, and however we insist that men 
might act better, are forced, unless we are fanati- 
cal simpletons, to consider how they are likely to 
act; so in this matter of the wealth that is carried 
in men’s minds, we have to reflect that the too 
absolute predominance of a class whose wants have 
been of a common sort, who are chiefly struggling 
to get better and more food, clothing, shelter, and 
bodily recreation, may lead to hasty measures for 
the sake of having things more fairly shared, 
which, even if they did not fail of their object, 
would at last debase the life of the nation. Do 
anything which will throw the classes who hold 
the treasures of knowledge —nay, I may say, the 
treasures of refined needs — into the background, 
cause them to withdraw from public affairs, stop 
too suddenly any of the sources by which their 
leisure and ease are furnished, rob them of the 
chances by which they may be influential and pre- 
eminent, and you do something as short-sighted as 
the acts of France and Spain when in jealousy and 
wrath, not altogether unprovoked, they drove from 
among them races and classes that held the tradi- 
tions of handicraft and agriculture. You injure 
your own inheritance and the inberitance of your 
children. You may truly say that this which I 
call the common estate of society has been any- 
thing but common to you; but the same may be 
said, by many of us, of the sunlight and the air, 
of the sky and the fields, of parks and holiday 
games. Nevertheless, that these blessings exist 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 341 


makes life worthier to us, and urges us the more 
to energetic, likely means of getting our share in 
them; and I say, let us watch carefully, lest we 
do anything to lessen this treasure which is held 
in the minds of men, while we exert ourselves, 
first of all, and to the very utmost, that we and 
our children may share in all its benefits. Yes; 
exert ourselves to the utmost, to break the yoke of 
ignorance. If we demand more leisure, more ease 
in our lives, let us show that we don’t deserve the 
reproach of wanting to shirk that industry which, 
in some form or other, every man, whether rich or 
poor, should feel himself as much bound to as he 
is bound to decency. Let us show that we want 
to have some time and strength left to us, that we 
may use it, not for brutal indulgence, but for the 
rational exercise of the faculties which make us 
men. Without this no political measures can 
benefit us. No political institution will alter the 
nature of Ignorance, or hinder it from producing 
vice and misery. Let Ignorance start how it will, 
it must run the same round of low appetites, pov- 
erty, slavery, and superstition. Some of us know 
this well, —nay, I will say, feel it, — for knowl- 
edge of this kind cuts deep; and to us it 1s one of 
the most painful facts belonging to our condition 
that there are numbers of our fellow-workmen who 
are so far from feeling in the same way, that they 
never use the imperfect opportunities already 
offered them for giving their children some school- 
ing, but turn their little ones of tender age into 
bread-winners, often at cruel tasks, exposed to the 
horrible infection of childish vice. Of course, the 
causes of these hideous things go a long way back.» 
Parents’ misery has made parents’ wickedness. 


342 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


But we who are still blessed with the hearts of 
fathers and the consciences of men,— we who have 
some knowledge of the curse entailed on broods of 
creatures in human shape, whose enfeebled bodies 
and dull perverted minds are mere centres of un- 
easiness in whom even appetite is feeble and joy 
impossible,—I say we are bound to use all the 
means at our command to help in putting a stop 
to this horror. Here, it seems to me, is a way in 
which we may use extended co-operation among us 
to the most momentous of all purposes, and make 
conditions of enrolment that would strengthen all 
educational measures. It is true enough that there 
is a low sense of parental duties in the nation at 
large, and that numbers who have no excuse in 
bodily hardship seem to think it a light thing to 
beget children, to bring human beings with all 
their tremendous possibilities into this difficult 
world, and then take little heed how they are dis- 
ciplined and furnished for the perilous journey 
they are sent on without any asking of their own. 
This is a sin, shared in more or less by all classes ; 
but there are sins which, like taxation, fall the 
heaviest on the poorest, and none have such gall- 
ing reasons as we working-men to try and rouse to 
the utmost the feeling of responsibility in fathers 
and mothers. We have been urged into co-opera- 
tion by the pressure of common demands. In war 
men need each other more; and where a given 
point has to be defended, fighters inevitably find 
themselves shoulder to shoulder. So fellowship 
grows, so grow the rules of fellowship, which 
eradually shape themselves to thoroughness as the 
‘idea of a common good becomes more complete. 
We feel a right to say, If you will be one of us, 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 343 


you must make such and such a contribution, you 
must renounce such and such a separate advantage, 
you must set your face against such and such an 
infringement. If we have any false ideas about 
our common good, our rules will be wrong, and 
we shall be co-operating to damage each other. 
But, now, here is a part of our good, without 
which everything else we strive for will be worth- 
less, —I mean the rescue of our children. Let us 
demand from the members of our unions that they 
fulfil their duty as parents in this definite matter, 
which rules can reach. Let us demand that they 
send their children to school, so as not to go on 
recklessly, breeding a moral pestilence among us, 
just as strictly as we demand that they pay their 
contributions to a common fund, understood to 
be for a common benefit. While we watch our 
public men, let us watch one another as to this 
duty, which is also public, and more momentous 
even than obedience to sanitary regulations. While 
we resolutely declare against the wickedness in 
high places, let us set ourselves also against the 
wickedness in low places, not quarrelling which 
came first, or which is the worse of the two, — not 
trying to settle the miserable precedence of plague 
or famine, but insisting unflinchingly on remedies 
once ascertained, and summoning those who hold 
the treasure of knowledge to remember that they 
hold it in trust, and that with them hes the task 
of searching for new remedies, and finding the 
right methods of applying them. 

To find right remedies and right methods. Here 
is the great function ofgknowledge: here the life 
of one man may make a fresh era straight away, 
in which a sort of suffering that has existed shall 


344. ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


exist no more. For the thousands of years down 
to the middle of the sixteenth century that human 
limbs had been hacked and amputated, nobody 
knew how to stop the bleeding except by searing 
the ends of the vessels with red-hot iron. But 
then came a man named Ambrose Paré, and said, 
“Tie up the arteries!” That was a fine word to 
utter. It contained the statement of a method, — 
a plan by which a particular evil was forever 
assuaged. Let us try to discern the men whose 
words carry that sort of kernel, and choose such 
men to be our guides and representatives, — not 
choose platform swaggerers, who bring us nothing 
but the ocean to make our broth with. 

To get the chief power into the hands of the 
wisest, which means to get our life regulated 
according to the truest principles mankind is in 
possession of, is a problem as old as the very 
notion of wisdom. The solution comes slowly, 
because men collectively can only be made to 
embrace principles, and to act on them, by the 
slow stupendous teaching of the world’s events. 
Men will go on planting potatoes, and nothing else 
but potatoes, till a potato disease comes and forces 
them to find out the advantage of a varied crop. 
Selfishness, stupidity, sloth, persist in trying te 
adapt the world to their desires, till a time comes 
when the world manifests itself as too decidedly 
inconvenient te them. Wisdom stands outside of 
man and urges itself upon him, like the marks of 
the changing seasons, before it finds a home within 
him, directs his actions, and from the precious 
effects of obedience begets a corresponding love. 

But while still outside of us, wisdom often looks 
terrible, and wears strange forms, wrapped in the 


ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 345 


changing conditions of a struggling world. It 
wears now the form of wants and just demands in 
a great multitude of British men: wants and de- 
mands urged into existence by the forces of a 
maturing world. And it is in virtue of this —in 
virtue of this presence of wisdom on our side as a 
mighty fact, physical and moral, which must enter 
into and shape the thoughts and actions of man- 
kind —that we working-men have obtained the 
suffrage. Not because we are an excellent multi- 
tude, but because we are a needy multitude. 
But now, for our own part, we have seriously to 
consider this outside wisdom which lies in the 
supreme unalterable nature of things, and watch 
to give it a home within us and obey it. If the 
claims of the unendowed multitude of working- 
men hold within them principles which must 
shape the future, it is not less true that the en- 
dowed classes, in their inheritance from the past, 
hold the precious material without which no 
worthy, noble future can be moulded. Many otf 
the highest uses of life are in their keeping ; and 
if privilege has often been abused, it has also been 
the nurse of excellence. Here again we have to 
submit ourselves to the great law of inheritance. 
If we quarrel with the way in which the labours 
and earnings of the past have been preserved and 
handed down, we are just as bigoted, just as nar- 
row, just as wanting in that religion which keeps 
an open ear and an obedient mind to the teachings 
of fact, as we accuse those of being, who quarrel 
with the new truths and new needs which are dis- 
closed in the present. The deeper insight we get 
into the causes of human trouble, and the ways by 
which men are made better and happier, the less 


346 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


we shall be inclined to the unprofitable spirit 
and practice of reproaching classes as such in 
a wholesale fashion. Not all the evils of our 
condition are such as we can justly blame others 
for; and, I repeat, many of them are such as no 
changes of institutions can quickly remedy. To 
discern between the evils that energy can remove 
and the evils that patience must bear, makes the 
difference between manliness and childishness, be- 
tween good sense and folly. And more than that, 
without such discernment, seeing that we have 
grave duties toward our own body and the country 
at large, we can hardly escape acts of fatal rashness 
and injustice. 

I am addressing a mixed assembly of workmen, 
and some of you may be as well or better fitted 
than I am to take up this office. But they will 
not think it amiss'in me that I have tried to bring 
together the considerations most lkely to be of 
service to us in preparing ourselves for the use of 
our new opportunities. I have avoided touching 
on special questions. The best help toward judg- 
ing well on these is to approach them in the 
right temper without vain expectation, and with a 
resolution which is mixed with temperance. 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 











LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 


AUTHORSHIP. 


To lay down in the shape of practical moral rules 
courses of conduct only to be made real by the 
rarest states of motive and disposition, tends not to 
elevate, but to degrade the general standard, by 
turning that rare attainment from an object of 
admiration into an impossible prescription, against 
which the average nature first rebels and then 
flings out ridicule. It is for art to present images 
of a lovelier order than the actual, gently winning 
the affections, and so determining the taste. But 
in any rational criticism of the time which is meant 
to guide a practical reform, it is idle to insist that 
action ought to be this or that, without considering 
how far the outward conditions of such change are 
present, even supposing the inward disposition 
towards it. Practically, we must be satisfied to 
aim at something short of perfection, — and at 
something very much further off it in one case 
than in another. While the fundamental concep- 
tions of morality seem as stationary through ages 
as the laws of life, so that a moral manual written 
eighteen centuries ago still admonishes us that we 
are low in our attainments, it is quite otherwise 
with the degree to which moral conceptions have 
penetrated the various forms of social activity, and 
made what may be called the special conscience of 


350 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


each calling, art, or industry. While on some 
points of social duty public opinion has reached a 
tolerably high standard, on others a public opinion 
is not yet born; and there are even some functions 
and practices with regard to which men far above 
the line in honourableness of nature feel hardly any 
scrupulosity, though their consequent behaviour is 
easily shown to be as injurious as bribery, or any 
other slowly poisonous procedure which degrades 
the social vitality. 

Among those callings which have not yet acquired 
anything near a full-grown conscience in the public 
mind is Authorship. Yet the changes brought 
about by the spread of instruction and. the conse- 
quent struggles of an uneasy ambition are, or at 
least might well be, forcing on many minds the 
need of some regulating principle with regard to 
the publication of intellectual products, which 
would override the rule of the market, —a princi- 
ple, that is, which should be derived from a fixing 
of the author’s vocation according to those charac- 
teristics in which it differs from the other bread- 
winning professions. Let this be done, if possible, 
without any cant, which would carry the subject 
into Utopia, away from existing needs. The guid- 
ance wanted is a clear notion of what should justify 
men and women in assuming public authorship, and 
of the way in which they should be determined by 
what is usually called success. But the forms of 
authorship must be distinguished ; journalism, for 
example, carrying a necessity for that continuous 
production which in other kinds of writing is pre- 
cisely the evil to be fought against, and judicious 
careful compilation, which is a great public service, 
holding in its modest diligence a guarantee against 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 351 


those deductions of vanity and idleness which draw 
many a young gentleman into reviewing, instead of 
the sorting and copying which his small talents 
could not rise to with any vigor and completeness. 

A manufacturer goes on producing calicoes as long 
and as fast as he can find a market for them; and in 
obeying this indication of demand he gives his fac- 
tory its utmost usefulness to the world in general 
and to himself in particular. Another manufac- 
turer buys a new invention of some light kind 
likely to attract the public fancy, 1s successful in 
finding a multitude who will give their testers for 
the transiently desirable commodity, and before the 
fashion is out, pockets a considerable sum : the com- 
modity was coloured with a green which had arsenic 
in it that damaged the factory workers and the pur- 
chasers. What then? These, he contends (or does 
not know or care to contend), are superficial effects, 
which it is folly to dwell upon while we have epi- 
demic diseases and bad government. 

The first manufacturer we will suppose blame- 
less. Is an author simply on a par with him, as to 
the rules of production ? 

The author’s capital is his brain-power, — power 
of invention, power of writing. The manufacturer's 
capital, in fortunate cases, is being continually 
reproduced and increased. Here is the first grand 
difference between the capital which is turned into 
calico and the brain capital which is turned into 
literature. The calico scarcely varies in appropri- 
ateness of quality ; no consumer is in danger of 
getting too much of it, and neglecting his boots, hats, 
and flannel shirts in consequence. That there should 
be large quantities of the same sort in the calico 
manufacture is an advantage: the sameness is desir- 


352 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


able, and nobody is hkely to roll his person in so 
many folds of calico as to become a mere bale of 
cotton goods, and nullify his senses of hearing and 
touch, while his morbid passion for Manchester 
shirtings makes him still cry “ More!” The wise 
manufacturer gets richer and richer, and the con- 
sumers he supphes have their real wants satisfied 
and no more. 

Let it be taken as admitted that all legitimate 
social activity must be beneficial to others besides 
the agent. To write prose or verse as a private 
exercise and satisfaction is not social activity ; 
nobody is culpable for this any more than for learn- 
ing other people’s verse by heart, if he does not 
neglect his proper business in consequence. If 
the exercise made him sillier or secretly more self- 
satisfied, that, to be sure, would be a roundabout way 
of injuring society ; for though a certain mixture of 
silliness may hghten existence, we have at present 
more than enough. 

But man or woman who publishes writings inevi- 
tably assumes the office of teacher or influencer of 
the public mind. Let him protest as he will that 
he only seeks to amuse, and has no pretension to do 
more than while away an hour of leisure or weari- 
ness, — “ the idle singer of an empty day,” — he can 
no more escape influencing the moral taste, and with 
it the action of the intelligence, than a setter of 
fashions in furniture and dress can fill the shops 
with his designs and leave the garniture of persons 
and houses unaffected by his industry. 

For aman who has a certain gift of writing to 
say, “I will make the most of it while the public 
likes my wares, as long as the market is open and 
I am able to supply it at a money profit, such profit 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 353 


being the sign of liking,” he should have a belief 
that his wares have nothing akin to the arsenic 
green in them, and also that his continuous supply 
is secure from a degradation in quality which the 
habit of consumption encouraged in the buyers may 
hinder them from marking their sense of by rejec- 
tion, so that they complain, but pay, and read while 
they complain. Unless he has that belief, he is on 
a level with the manufacturer who gets rich by 
fancy wares coloured with arsenic green. He really 
cares for nothing but his income. He carries on 
authorship on the principle of the gin-palace ; and 
bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual 
gin. 

A writer capable of being popular can only escape 
this social culpability by first of all getting a pro- 
found sense that literature is good for nothing if it 
is not admirably good ; he must detest bad hterature 
too heartily to be indifferent about producing it if 
only other people don’t detest its sAndeitahe has 
this sign of the divine afflatus within him, he must 
make up his mind that he must not pursue author- 
ship as a vocation with a trading determination to 
get rich by it. It is in the highest sense lawful for 
him to get as good a price as he honourably can for 
the best work he is capable of ; but not for him to 
force or hurry his production, or even do over again 
what has already been done, either by himself or 
others, so as to render his work no real contribu- 
tion, for the sake of bringing up his income to the 
fancy pitch. An author who would keep a pure and 
noble conscience, and with that a developing instead 
of degenerating intellect and taste, must cast out of 
his aims the aim to be rich. And therefore he must 


keep his expenditure low, —he must make for him- 
VOL. Il. — 23 


354 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


self no dire necessity to earn sums in order to pay 
bills. 

In opposition to this, it is common to cite Walter 
Scott’s case, and ery, “ Would the world have got as 
much innocent (and therefore salutary) pleasure out 
of Scott, if he had not brought himself under the 
pressure of money-need?” I think it would — and 
more; but since it 1s impossible to prove what would 
have been, I confine myself to replying that Scott 
was not justified in bringing himself into a position 
where severe consequences to others depended on 
his retaining or not retaining his mental competence. 
Still less is Scott to be taken as an example to be 
followed in this matter, even if it were admitted 
that money-need served to press at once the best 
and the most work out of him; any more than a 
great navigator who has brought his ship to port in 
spite of having taken a wrong and perilous route, is 
to be followed as to his route by navigators who are 
not yet ascertained to be great. 

But after the restraints and rules which must 
guide the acknowledged author, whose power ot 
making a real contribution is ascertained, comes the 
consideration, How or on what principle are we to 
find a check for that troublesome disposition to 
authorship arising from the spread of what is called 
Education, which turnes a growing rush of vanity 
and ambition into this current? The well-taught 
—an increasing number —are almost all able to 
write essays on given themes, which demand new 
periodicals to save them from lying in cold obstruc- 
tion. The ill-taught —also an increasing number 
—read many: books, seem to themselves able to 
write others surprisingly like what they read, and 
probably superior, since the variations are such as 





LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 355 


please their own fancy, and such as they would have 
recommended to their favourite authors: these ill- 
taught persons are perhaps idle and want to give 
themselves “an object ;” or they are short of money, 
and feel disinclined to get it by a commoner kind of 
work; or they find a facility in putting sentences 
together which gives them more than a suspicion 
that they have genius, which, if not very cordially 
believed in by private confidants, will be recognized 
by an impartial public; or, finally, they observe that 
writing is sometimes well paid, and sometimes a 
ground of fame or distinction, and without any use 
of punctilious logic, they conclude to become writers 
themselves. 

As to these ill-taught persons, whatever medicines 
of a spiritual sort can be found good against mental 
emptiness and inflation, such medicines are needful 
for them. The contempt of the world for their pro- 
ductions only comes after their disease has wrought 
its worst effects. But what is to be said to the well- 
taught, who have such an alarming equality in their 
power of writing “like a scholar and a gentlemen ?” 


‘Perhaps they too can only be cured by the medicine 


of higher ideals in social duty, and by a fuller rep- 
resentation to themselves of the processes by which 
the general culture is furthered or impeded. 


JUDGMENTS OF AUTHORS. 


In endeavouring to estimate a remarkable writer 
who aimed at more than temporary influence, we 
have first to consider what was his individual con- 
tribution to the spiritual wealth of mankind. Had 
he a new conception? Did he animate long-known 
but neglected truths with new vigour, and cast fresh 


356 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


light on their relation to other admitted truths ? 
Did he impregnate any ideas with a fresh store of 
emotion, and in this way enlarge the area of moral 
sentiment? Did he, by a wise emphasis here, anda 
wise disregard there, give a more useful or beautiful 
proportion to aims or motives? And even where 
his thinking was most mixed with the sort of mis- 
take which is obvious to the majority, as well as 
that which can only be discerned by the instructed, 
or made manifest by the progress of things, has it 
that salt of a noble enthusiasm which should rebuke 
our critical discrimination if its correctness is in- 
spired with a less admirable habit of feeling ? 

This is not the common or easy course to take in 
estimating a modern writer. It requires considerable 
knowledge of what he has himself done, as well as 
of what others have done before him, or what they 
were doing contemporaneously ; it requires deliber- 
ate reflection as to the degree in which our own 
prejudices may hinder us from appreciating the 
intellectual or moral bearing of what on a first view 
offends us. An easier course is to notice some salient 
mistakes, and take them as decisive of the writer’s 
incompetence ; or to find out that something appar- 
ently much the same as what he has said in some 
connection not clearly ascertained had been said 
by somebody else, though without great effect, until 
this new effect of discrediting the other’s originality 
had shown itself as an adequate final cause ; or to 
pronounce from the point of view of individual taste 
that this writer for whom regard is claimed is repul- 
sive, wearisome, not to be borne except by those dull 
persons who are of a different opinion. 

Elder writers who have passed into classics were 
doubtless treated in this easy way when they were 


LEAVES FROM A. NOTE-BOOK. 357 


still under the misfortune of being recent,— nay, 
are still dismissed with the same rapidity of judg- 
ment by daring ignorance. But people who think 
that they have a reputation to lose in the matter of 
knowledge have looked into cyclopedias and_his- 
tories of philosophy or literature, and possessed 
themselves of the duly balanced epithets concerning 
the immortals. They are not left to their own 
unguided rashness, or their own unguided pusilla- 
nimity. And it is this sheeplike flock who have no 
direct impressions, no spontaneous delight, no genu- 
ine objection or self-confessed neutrality in relation 
to the writers become classic, —it is these who are 
incapable of passing a genuine judgment on the liv- 
ing. Necessarily. The susceptibility they have 
kept active is a susceptibility to their own reputation 
for passing the right judgment, not the susceptibility 
to qualities in the object of judgment. Who learns 
to discriminate shades of colour by considering what 
is expected of him? The habit of expressing bor- 
rowed judgments stupefies the sensibilities, which 
are the only foundation of genuine judgments, Just 
as the constant reading and retailing of results from 
other men’s observations through the microscope, 
without ever looking through the lens one’s self, 1s 
an instruction in some truths and some prejudices, 
but is no instruction in observant susceptibility ; 
on the contrary, it breeds a habit of inward seeing 
according to verbal statement, which dulls the power 
of outward seeing according to visual evidence. 

On this subject, as on so many others, it is difficult 
to strike the balance between the educational needs 
of passivity or receptivity, and independent selection. 
We should learn nothing without the tendency to 
implicit acceptance; but there must clearly be a 


358 ESSAYS OF -GEORGE ELIOT. 


limit to such mental submission, else we should 
come to a standstill. The human mind would be 
no better than a dried specimen, representing an 
unchangeable type. When the assimilation of new 
matter ceases, decay must begin. In a reasoned 
self-restraining deference there is as much energy 
as in rebellion; but among the less capable, one 
must admit that the superior energy is on the side 
of the rebels. And certainly a man who dares to 
say that he finds an eminent classic feeble here, 
extravagant there, and in general overrated, may 
chance to give an opinion which has some genuine 
discrimination in it concerning a new work or a liv- 
ing thinker, —an opinion such as can hardly ever be 
cot from the reputed judge who is a correct echo 
of the most approved phrases concerning those who 
have been already canonized. 


STORY-TELLING. 


Wuat is the best way of telling a story? Since 
the standard must be the interest of the audience, 
there must be several or many good ways rather 
than one best. For we get interested in the stories 
life presents to us through divers orders and modes 
of presentation. Very commonly our first awaken- 
ing toa desire of knowing a man’s past or future 
comes from our seeing him as a stranger in some 
unusual or pathetic or humorous situation, or mani- 
festing some remarkable characteristics. We make 
inquiries in consequence, or we become observant 
and attentive whenever opportunities of knowing 
more may happen to present themselves without 
our search. You have seen a refined face among the 
prisoners picking tow in jail; you afterwards see 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 359 


the same unforgetable face in a pulpit: he must be 
of dull fibre who would not care to know more about 
a life which showed such contrasts, though he 
might gather his knowledge in a fragmentary and 
unchronological way. 

Again, we have heard much, or at least something 
not quite common, about a man whom we have 
never seen, and hence we look round with curiosity 
when we are told that he is present; whatever he 
says or does before us is charged with a meaning 
due to our previous hearsay knowledge about him, 
gathered either from dialogue of which he was 
expressly and emphatically the subject, or from 
incidental remark, or from general report either in 
or out of print. 

These indirect ways of arriving at knowledge are 
always the most stirring even in relation to imper- 
sonal subjects. To see a chemical experiment gives 
an attractiveness to a definition of chemistry, and 
fills it with a significance which it would never 
have had without the pleasant shock of an unusual 
sequence, such as the transformation of a solid into 
gas, and vice versa. To see a word for the first time 
either as substantive or adjective in a connection 
where we care about knowing its complete mean- 
ing, is the way to vivify its meaning in our recol- 
lection. Curiosity becomes the more eager from 
the incompleteness of the first information. More- 
over, it is in this way that memory works in its 
incidental revival of events; some salient experi- 
ence appears in inward vision, and in consequence 
the antecedent facts are retraced from what is 
regarded as the beginning of the episode in. which 
that experience made a more or less strikingly 
memorable part. “Ah! I remember addressing 


360 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


the mob from the hustings at Westminster, — you 
would n’t have thought that I could ever have been 
in such a position. Well, how I came there was 
in this way;” and then follows a retrospective 
narration. 

The modes of telling a story founded on these 
processes of outward and inward life derive their 
effectiveness from the superior mastery of images 
and pictures in grasping the attention, — or, one 
might say with more fundamental accuracy, from 
the fact that our earliest, strongest impressions, our 
most intimate convictions, are simply images added 
to more or less of sensation. These are the primitive 
instruments of thought. Hence it is not surprising 
that early poetry took this way, — telling a daring 
deed, a glorious achievement, without caring for 
what went before. The desire for orderly narration 
is a later, more reflective birth. The presence of 
the Jack in the box affects every child: it is the 
more reflective lad, the miniature philosopher, who 
wants to know how he got there. 

The only stories hfe presents to us in an orderly 
way are those of our autobiography, or the career of 
our companions from our childhood upwards, or per- 
haps of our own children. But it is a great art to 
make a connected strictly relevant narrative of such 
careers as we can recount from the beginning. In 
these cases the sequence of associations is almost 
sure to overmaster the sense of proportion. Such 
narratives ab ovo are summer’s-day stories for happy 
loungers ; not the cup of self-forgetting excitement 
to the busy who can snatch an hour of entertainment. 

But: the simple opening of a story with a date and 
necessary account of places and people, passing on 
quietly towards the more rousing elements of nar- 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 361 


rative and dramatic presentation, without need of 
retrospect, has its advantages, which have to be 
measured by the nature of the story. Spirited nar- 
@ative, without more than a touch of dialogue here 
and there, may be made eminently interesting, and 
is suited to the novelette. Examples of its charm 
are seen in the short tales in which the French 
have a mastery never reached by the English, who 
usually demand coarser flavours than are given by 
that delightful gayety which is well described by 
La Fontaine! as not anything that provokes fits of 
laughter, but a certain charm, an agreeable mode of 
handling, which lends attractiveness to all subjects, 
even the most serious. And it is this sort of gayety 
which plays around the best French novelettes. 
But the opening chapters of the “ Vicar of Wake- 
field” are as fine as anything that can be done in 
this way. 

Why should a story not be told in the most 
irregular fashion that an author’s idiosyncrasy may 
prompt, provided that he gives us what we can 
enjoy? The objections to Sterne’s wild way of tell- 
ing “Tristram Shandy” le more solidly in the 
quality of the interrupting matter than in the fact 
of interruption. The dear public would do well to 
reflect that they are often bored from the want of 
flexibility in their own minds. They are like the 
topers of “one liquor.” 


HISTORIC IMAGINATION. 


TuE exercise of a veracious imagination in his- 
torical picturing seems to be capable of a development 
1“ Je n’appelle pas gayeté ce qui excite le rire, mais un certain 


charme, un air agréable qu’on peut donner & toutes sortes de 
sujets, mesme les plus sérieux.” — Preface to Fables. 


362 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


that might help the judgment greatly with regard 
to present and future events. By veracious imagi- 
nation, I mean the working out in detail of the 
various steps by which a poltical or social chang@ 
was reached, using all extant evidence and supply- 
ing deficiencies by careful analogical creation. How 
triumphant opinions originally spread ; how institu- 
tions arose; what were the conditions of great 
inventions, discoveries, or theoretic conceptions ; 
what circumstances affecting individual lots are 
attendant on the decay of long-established systems, 
—all these grand elements of history require the 
illumination of special imaginative treatment. But 
effective truth in this application of art requires 
freedom from the vulgar coercion of conventional 
plot, which is become hardly of higher influence on 
imaginative representation than a detailed “ order ” 
for a picture sent by a rich grocer to an eminent 
painter, — allotting a certain portion of the canvas 
to a rural scene, another to a fashionable group, 
with a request for a murder in the middle distance, 
and a little comedy to relieve it. A shght approxi- 
mation to the veracious glimpses of history artisti- 
cally presented, which I am indicating, but apphed 
only to an incident of contemporary life, is “Un 
Paquet de Lettres” by Gustave Droz. For want of 
such real, minute vision of how changes come about 
in the past, we fall into ridiculously inconsistent 
estimates of actual movements, condemning in the 
present what we belaud in the past, and pronoun- 
cing impossible processes that have been repeated 
again and again in the historical preparation of the 
very system under which we live. A false kind of 
idealization dulls our perception of the meaning in 
words when they relate to past events which have 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 363 


had a glorious issue; for lack of comparison no 
warning image rises to check scorn of the very 
phrases which in other associations are consecrated. 

Utopian pictures help the reception of ideas as to 
constructive results, but hardly so much as a vivid 
presentation of how results have been actually 
brought about, especially in religious and social 
change. And there is the pathos, the heroism, 
often accompanying the decay and final struggle of 
old systems, which has not had its share of tragic 
commemoration. What really took place in and 
around Constantine before, upon, and immediately 
after his declared conversion? Could a momentary 
flash be thrown on Eusebius in his sayings and 
doings as an ordinary man in bishop’s garments ? 
Or on Julian and Libanius? There has been abun- 
dant writing on such great turning-points, but not 
such as serves to instruct the imagination in true 
comparison. I want something different from the 
abstract treatment which belongs to grave history 
from a doctrinal point of view, and something dit- 
ferent from the schemed picturesqueness of ordinary 
historical fiction. I want brief, severely conscien- 
tious reproductions, in their concrete incidents, of 
pregnant movements in the past. + 


VALUE IN ORIGINALITY. 


THE supremacy given in European cultures to the 
literatures of Greece and Rome has had an effect 
almost equal to that of a common religion in bind- 
ing the Western nations together. It is foolish to 
be forever complaining of the consequent uniformity, 
as if there were an endless power of originality in 
the human mind. Great and precious originatiou 


364 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


must always be comparatively rare, and can only 
exist on condition of a wide, massive uniformity. 
When a multitude of men have learned to use the 
same language in speech and writing, then and then 
only can the greatest masters of language arise. For 
in what does their mastery consist? They use words 
which are already a familiar medium of understand- 
ing and sympathy in such a way as greatly to en- 
large the understanding and sympathy. Originality 
of this order changes the wild grasses into world- 
feeding grain. Idiosyncrasies are pepper and spices 
of questionable aroma. 


TO THE PROSAIC ALL THINGS ARE PROSAIC. 


“Ts the time we live in prosaic?” “That depends: 
it must certainly be prosaic to one whose mind takes 
a prosaic stand in contemplating it.” “But it is 
precisely the most poetic minds that most groan 
over the vulgarity of the present, its degenerate 
sensibility to beauty, eagerness for materialistic ex- 
planation, noisy triviality.” “Perhaps they would 
have had the same complaint to make about the age 
of Elizabeth, if, living then, they had fixed their 
attention on its more sordid elements, or had been 
subject to the grating influence of its every-day 
meannesses, and had sought refuge from them in 
the contemplation of whatever suited their taste in 
a former age.” 


“DEAR RELIGIOUS LOVE.” — 


WE get our knowledge of perfect Love by glimpses 
and in fragments chiefly, —the rarest only among 
us knowing what it is to worship and caress, rever- 
ence and cherish, divide our bread and mingle our 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 365 


thoughts at one and the same time, under inspira- 
tion of the same object. Finest aromas will so 
often leave the fruits to which they are native and 
cling elsewhere, leaving the fruit empty of all but 
its coarser structure ! : 


WE MAKE OUR OWN PRECEDENTS. 


In the times of national mixture, when modern 
Europe was, as one may say, a-brewing, it was open 
to a man who did not hke to be judged by the 
Roman law to choose which of certain other codes 
he would be tried by. So, in our own times, they who 
openly adopt a higher rule than their neighbors do 
thereby make act of choice as to the laws and pre- 
cedents by which they shall be approved or con- 
demned; and thus it may happen that we see a man 
morally pilloried for a very customary deed, and yet 
having no right to complain, inasmuch as in his 
foregoing deliberative course of life he had referred 
himself to the tribunal of those higher conceptions, 
before which such a deed is without question 
condemnable. 


BIRTH OF TOLERANCE. 


TOLERANCE first comes through equality of strug- 
ele, as in the case of Arianism and Catholicism in 
the early times, — Valens, Eastern and Arian, Val- 
entinian, Western and Catholic, alike publishing 
edicts of tolerance; or it comes from a common need 
of relief from an oppressive predominance, as when 
James II. published his Act of Tolerance towards 
non-Anglicans, being forced into liberality towards 
the Dissenters by the need to get it for the Catholics. 
Community of interest is the root of Justice; com- 


366 ESSAYS. OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


munity of suffering, the root of pity ; community of 
joy, the root of love. 


ENVELOPED in a common mist, we seem to walk 
in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist 
that enshrouds others. 


SYMPATHETIC people are often incommunicative 
about themselves: they give back reflected images 
which hide their own depths. 


THE pond said to the ocean, “ Why do you rage 
so? The wind is not so very violent, — nay, it is 
already fallen. Look at me. I rose into no foam- 
ing waves, and am already smooth again.” 


KE UEXOUI NON -PO?TUET 


Many feel themselves very confidently on safe 
ground when they say: It must be good for man to 
know the Truth. But it is clearly not good for a 
particular man to know some particular truth, as 
irremediable treachery in one whom he cherishes, — 
better that he should die without knowing it. 

Of scientific truth, is it not conceivable that some 
facts as to the tendency of things affecting the final 
destination of the race might be more hurtful when 
they had entered into the human consciousness than 
they would have been if they had remained purely 
external in their activity ? 


DIVINE GRACE A REAL EMANATION. 


THERE is no such thing as an impotent or neutral 
deity, if the deity be really believed in, and con- 
templated either in prayer or meditation. Every 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 307 


object of thought reacts on the mind that conceives 
it, still more on that which habitually contemplates 
it. In this we may be said to solicit help from a 
generalization or abstraction. Wordsworth had this 
truth in his consciousness when he wrote (in the 
Prelude), — 


“ Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort 
Of elements and agents, Under-powers, 
Subordinate helpers of the living mind” — 


not indeed precisely in the same relation, but witha 
meaning which involves that wider moral influence. 


“A FINE EXCESS.” — FEELING IS ENERGY. 


One can hardly insist too much, in the present 
stage of thinking, on the efficacy of feeling in stim- 
ulating to ardent co-operation, quite apart from the 
conviction that such co-operation is needed for the 
achievement of the end in view. Just as hatred 
will vent itself in private curses no longer believed 
to have any potency, and joy, in private singing far 
out among the woods and fields, so sympathetic feel- 
ing can only be satisfied by joining in the action 
which expresses it, though the added “ Bravo!” the 
added push, the added penny, is no more than a 
grain of dust on a rolling mass. When students 
take the horses out of a political hero’s carriage, 
and draw him home by the force of their own mus- 
cle, the struggle in each is simply to draw or push, 
without consideration whether his place would not 
be as well filled by somebody else, or whether his 
one arm be really needful to the effect. It 1s under 
the same inspiration that abundant help rushes 
towards the scene of a fire, rescuing imperilled lives, 
and labouring with generous rivalry in carrying 


368 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 


buckets. So the old blind King John of Bohemia 
at the battle of Crécy begged his vassals to lead him 
into the fight that he might strike a good blow, 
though his own stroke, possibly fatal to himself, 
could not turn by a hair’s breadth the imperious 
course of victory. 

The question, “Of what use is it for me to work 
towards an end confessedly good?” comes from that 
sapless kind of reasoning which is falsely taken for 
a sign of supreme mental activity, but is really due 
to languor, or incapability of that mental grasp 
which makes objects strongly present, and to a lack 
of sympathetic emotion. In the “Spanish Gypsy” 
Fedalma says, — | 


‘“The grandest death! to die in vain — for Love 
Greater than sways the forces of the world”! 


referring to the image of the disciples throwing 
themselves, consciously in vain, on the Roman 
spears. I really believe and mean this — not as a 
rule of general action, but as a possible grand in- 
stance of determining energy in human sympathy, 
which even in particular cases, where it has only a 
magnificent futility, is more adorable, or as we say 
divine, than unpitying force, or than a prudent cal- 
culation of results. Perhaps it is an implicit joy in 
the resources of our human nature which has stim- 
ulated admiration for acts of self-sacrifice which are 
vain as to their immediate end. Marcus Curtius 
was probably not imagined as concluding to himself 
that he and his horse would so fill up the gap as to 
make a smooth terra firma. The impulse and act 


1 Vide what Demosthenes says (“De Coron&”) about Athens 
pursuing the same course, though she had known from the be- 
ginning that her heroic resistance would be in vain. 


LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 369 


made the heroism, not the correctness of adaptation. 
No doubt the passionate inspiration which prompts 
and sustains a course of self-sacrificing labour in the 
light of soberly estimated results gathers the high- 
est title to our veneration, and makes the supreme 
heroism. But the generous leap of impulse is 
needed too, to swell the flood of sympathy in us 
beholders, that we may not fall completely under 
the mastery of calculation, which in its turn may 
fail of ends for want of energy got from ardour. 
We have need to keep-the sluices open for possible 
influxes of the rarer sort. 


VOL. 11. — 24 


THE END. 














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Hil se yi : 

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